and infilling valleys. Such massive grading operations often resulted in inadequate compaction of fill materials creating areas of dangerously soft and weak ground within cities throughout Japan. In recent years, a significant number of valley-fill failures and fill slope failures have been reported during large earthquakes that centered in large cities (Kamai et al., 2002). One of the first landslides in a valleyfill was recognized in a suburb of Sendai City during the Miyagi