Аннотация:In order to better understand the processes of stress accumulation and stress release associated with the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, we estimated the mass transfers along the Japanese subduction using a space-time analysis of the GRACE GRGS geoid models. In a first step, we reconstruct the time variations of Earth’s gravity gradients from GRACE, and we investigate how the gravity signal varies in space as a function of scale and direction using rotations of the gradients tensor filtered at different scales. We then analyze the time variations of the rotated tensor components at different spatial scales over the 2003-2014 timespan. For that, we apply a Markov chain Monte Carlo approach to estimate the time model parameters. We assess the consistency of the obtained gravity signals with GNSS measurements of deformations along the Japanese arc. We finally discuss how these results can advance the understanding of the seismic cycle in the area.