Map to microscopic-scale structural analysis of the Hanazono Assemblage of the Shimanto Belt in SW Japan, an excellent example of a deeply buried accretionary complex, indicates a detailed process from underthrusting to underplating. The earliest underthursting process is recorded in fabric of melange, which has deformed by shear along the decollement, characterized by thinning strain due to extensional breakage of blocks of sandstone and exotic materials, such as basalt and pelagic sediments of oceanic affinities. The deformation mechanism for melange formation for domain I is plastic flow, concordant with metamorphic grade, which is higher than that of domain II. The deformation mechanism for domain II is predominantly pressure solution partly with grain-scale brittle breakage for the less metamorphosed part of the Hanazono Assemblage. The posterior underplating process recorded is contraction and thickening due to thrust stacking and folding. Locations of the folds developed beneath thrusts are emphasized because they are a line of evidence of thickening. The main deformation mechanism of the second stage is plastic flow for domain I and cataclasis for domain II. The cataclasis in domain II may be a result of change in strain rate and seems to be related to seismicity at the time of underplating. Kinematics deduced from fabric analysis of the earliest deformed melange indicates a good consistency with a relative plate motion between the Eurasian and oceanic plates that is estimated from a hot spot reference plate circuit model by Engebretson et al. <1985>, while that of the subsequent thrusting is not. This fact suggests that strain partitioning in association with oblique subduction of oceanic plate was minimum during subduction. Another possibility for strain partitioning is the requirement of coupling between plates that are recorded by the deformation mechanisms. ¿ 2001 American Geophysical Union