The US-Japan Workshop on Geotechnical Aspects of Recent Earthquakes was held at the Kansai Kenshu Centre, Osaka, Japan on 22-24 January 1996. The objectives of the workshop were to summarise lessons learned from the Lorna Prieta, Northridge, and Kobe earthquakes, to identify ongoing research needs, to summarise available data, and to identify areas of possible co-operation for future research. The society was invited to send a representative from New Zealand with observer status provided that person present a report summarising current and ongoing research on geotechnical earthquake engineering within New Zealand. The author was selected to be the New Zealand observer and the summary report accompanies this article. Thirty two participants attended from the US and thirty from Japan including most of the well known, active researchers from the two countries. A complete list of participants is given in Appendix A. The draft workshop report, with contributions from many of the participants, is summarised below. A full copy of the report is held by the author.