Foreword

The Fifth International Symposium on Earth Reinforcement (IS Kyushu 2007) was held in Fukuoka, Japan, from 14 to 16 November 2007. This symposium was hosted by the Japanese Geotechnical Society (JGS) under the auspices of the International Geosynthetics Society (IGS) and TC17 of the International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (ISSMGE). The theme of the conference was ‘New Horizons in Earth Reinforcement'. The conference attracted 274 delegates from 27 countries. A total of 124 full papers appeared in the conference proceedings.

At the invitation of the Editor of Geosynthetics International (Professor R. J. Bathurst) the conference organisers were asked to select a number of outstanding papers by Japanese authors as candidates for inclusion in a special issue of the journal. The authors of five papers were approached by ourselves and invited to submit an expanded paper to the journal. Each paper was subjected to critical peer review consistent with the high standards of the journal.

We believe that the five papers that appear in this special collection are outstanding examples of the high calibre of research by members of the Japanese geosynthetics fraternity. These papers will be an important contribution to the discipline for many years to come. We congratulate the authors of these papers for their hard work, and for agreeing to share their knowledge with the readers of Geosynthetics International. Finally we would like to thank Professor R. J. Bathurst for his assistance in making this special collection possible.