Abstract
Seismic capacity evaluation using a commonly used method for existing buildings and earthquake response analysis in large deformation range were conducted to study collapsing mechanism of West building of Mikage junior high school damaged by 1995 Kobe earthquake. The building consisted of two parts separated by an expansion joint which clearance was uncertain. According to the several photos of the damaged building, the author susoected that those parts collided each other during the earthquake because the clearance of the expansion joint was not enough, and the collision had a bad influence upon the seismic performance of the building. But the evaluated results and the analytical results indicated that the main reason of the collapse was poor seismic performance of both parts of the building, also there was a possibility that the collision contributed to collapse the building.
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