Japan’s major earthquakes in the past 15 years
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Collapsed buildings after a 7.1-magnitude struck Japan's southern Kumamoto prefecture, on July 29.
PHOTO: REUTERS
- Japan experiences frequent powerful earthquakes due to its location on the Pacific "Ring of Fire," with up to 2,000 felt quakes annually and 20% of the world's magnitude 6+ quakes.
- Major earthquakes in the last 15 years include the 2011 9.0-magnitude disaster causing nearly 20,000 deaths and Fukushima nuclear meltdown, and the 2024 Noto peninsula quake killing over 300.
- Recent significant quakes caused deaths, injuries, landslides, power outages, and industrial disruption, highlighting ongoing seismic risks and emergency challenges in Japan.
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TOKYO – A powerful earthquake struck southern Japan on July 28, leaving many presumed dead inside a partially collapsed shopping mall, thousands of houses without power, and factories suspended.
Situated on the “Ring of Fire” arc of volcanoes and oceanic trenches partly encircling the Pacific Basin, Japan accounts for about 20 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of 6-magnitude or greater, and each year experiences up to 2,000 quakes that can be felt by people.
These are some of the major quakes that have hit Japan in the last 15 years:
- On March 11, 2011, a 9-magnitude earthquake and tsunami struck north-east Japan, killing nearly 20,000 people and causing a meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear power plant, leading to the world’s worst nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.
- On April 16, 2016, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck Kumamoto, the scene of July 28’s temblor, killing more than 270 people, including some caught in landslides and heavy rain in the aftermath.
- On June 18, 2018, a 6.1-magnitude earthquake in Osaka, Japan’s second-biggest metropolis, killed four people, injured hundreds more and halted factory lines in an industrial area.
- On Sept 6, 2018, a 6.7-magnitude earthquake paralysed Japan’s northern island of Hokkaido, killing more than 40 people, triggering landslides and knocking out power to its 5.3 million residents.
- On Feb 13, 2021, a 7.3-magnitude earthquake hit off the coast of Fukushima in eastern Japan, injuring dozens of people and triggering widespread power outages in Greater Tokyo.
- On March 16, 2022, a 7.4-magnitude earthquake jolted the coast off Fukushima again, leaving three dead, more than 200 injured and reviving memories of the quake and tsunami that crippled the Pacific coast region just over a decade earlier.
- On Jan 1, 2024, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked the remote Noto peninsula on the west coast of central Japan on New Year’s Day. More than 300 people were killed.
- On Aug 8, 2024, a 7.1-magnitude earthquake off the coast of southern Miyazaki triggered Japan’s first-ever advisory warning of higher-than-usual risks of a megaquake, which was lifted a week later. REUTERS
