A Review of MIS 5e Sea-level Proxies around Japan

Abstract. Sea-level proxies for Marine Isotopic Stage 5e (MIS 5e, ca. 124 ka) are abundant along the Japanese shoreline, and have been documented for over at least the last 60 years. The bulk of these sea-level proxies are identified in Japan as marine terraces, often correlated by stratigraphic relationships to identified tephra layers, or other chronologically interpreted strata. Use of stratigraphic correlation in conjunction with other techniques such as paleontological analysis, tectonic uplift rates, tephra (volcanic ash), Uranium-Thorium (U/Th), Carbon-14 (¹⁴C), and Optically Stimulated Luminesce (OSL) dating techniques have connected Japan’s landforms to global patterns of sea-level change. This paper reviews over 60 years of publications containing sea-level proxies correlated to forming during MIS 5e in Japan. Data collected for this review have been added to the World Atlas of Last Interglacial Shorelines (WALIS), following their standardizations on the elements necessary to analyze paleo sea-levels. This paper reviewed over 70 studies, assembling data points for 300+ locations and examining related papers denoting sea-level indicators for MIS 5e. The database compiled for this review review (Tam and Yokoyama, 2020) is available at: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.4294326 .