From the preface: This volume is a collection of papers presented at the U.S. - Japan Joint Seminar on Stochastic Approaches in Earthquake Engineering held on May 6 and 7, 1987. The general theme of the two-day program was the application of probability and statistics to engineering problems related to strong ground motion. Within this general theme a great variety of subject matters were covered, including earthquake cataloging, ground motion modeling, system identification, failure mechanisms, response and reliability analyses, numerical techniques, and active control. The engineering systems considered included buildings, bridges and life-line networks.