The contribution of Japanese building stone granites to modern architecture is underestimated simply because there are insufficient records. It is important to investigate the provenance of the unknown granites that are now used in Japanese modern architecture. As destructive inspection is generally not permitted in such historic buildings, we propose using a portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF) to support the provenance study of the granites. We tested 11 granites from various quarries in Japan and discovered that some trace elements can help distinguish the localities of the granites. Case studies are performed on two Japanese modern architectures.
Inui et al. (Thu,) studied this question.