A powerful 7.2 magnitude Japan earthquake struck off the eastern coast of Iwate prefecture on Thursday morning, jolting northeastern Japan during rush hour and briefly disrupting rail service. The Japan Meteorological Agency said there was no danger of a tsunami.
The quake shook dozens of towns and was felt lightly in Tokyo. Officials said eight people were injured in Aomori and Iwate, mostly from falling or being hit by falling objects, while the East Japan Railway Co. temporarily suspended some bullet trains and local lines for safety checks.
Tomoko Nagane said classes were canceled for the day in Hashikami and that all children returned home safely. That detail captured the narrow line this quake walked: strong enough to rattle a wide stretch of northeastern Japan, but not strong enough to trigger a tsunami warning or, at least by the latest count, serious injuries.
The Japan Meteorological Agency later upgraded the quake from an initial reading of 6.9 after refining its estimate of the shaking, a routine adjustment when more data come in from seismic sensors. It said the quake was about 50 kilometers deep, while the U.S. Geological Survey reported it at 6.9.
The event landed in a region that has seen strong earthquakes reported repeatedly in recent months, and it comes after December’s quake in the area triggered a weeklong mega-quake caution advisory. Japan sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire and is among the world’s most earthquake-prone countries, so the ground moving hard enough to stop trains and clear classrooms still carries immediate weight even when the damage is limited.
There was no indication of problems at nuclear power plants and facilities, including the Fukushima Daiichi plant and a spent fuel reprocessing plant in Aomori, and that is the clearest reason the morning did not turn into a larger emergency. The next concern is not what happened in the first minutes, but whether aftershocks or another strong jolt follow in the same unsettled stretch of northeastern Japan.
