The present study examines the soliton fission process of tsunami propagating over reef shallow water coast by hydraulic experiments. The effects of water depth above the reef, tsunami amplitude and period are investigated. In addition to the experiments, two different kinds of numerical models are employed in order to know how accurately the models can reproduce the process of tsunami transformation such as the occurrence of fission, amplitude, number of soliton waves and phase celerity propagating over the reef. It was found that even if the tsunami amplitude and period are the same, the transformation process of first water-level-rising tsunami is different from that of first-falling tsunami and that there are differences between experimental transformations and numerically obtained transformations generally.