TOKYO (REUTERS) - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.2 hit the southern Japanese island of Kyushu on Tuesday (July 11), but no tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of injuries or damage.

The quake was centred just offshore from the city of Kagoshima, NHK public television said.

Japan is one of the world's most seismically active areas, accounting for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.

On March 11, 2011, the north-east coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami. Those events triggered the world's worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.