Vietnam5

East Japan Offshore

Japan Oceanic Trench

As illustrated on the location map, the Japan Oceanic Trench lies eastward of the Japanese islands between the western Pacific plate (plunging lithospheric plate of the B-type subduction zone) and the North America overriding plate. It corresponds to a series of depressions stretching south from the Kuril trench and northward of the Izu-Bonin (Izu-Ogasawara trench)which is located northward of the Marianne Trench. As recognized on this depth tentative interpretation, the Japan trench is characterized by extensional structures (horst band grabens) developed by an extensional tectonic regime (σ₁ vertical) induced by the flexural bending of the subducting Pacific plate, resulting in rough trench-floor morphology with isolated trench-fill and graben-fill basins ( Kioka et al., 2019).