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List of earthquakes in Japan

Adapted from Wikipedia Β· Discoverer experience

A navy helicopter flies over Sendai to deliver food aid after a major earthquake and tsunami.

This is a list of notable earthquakes that happened in Japan. The list includes earthquakes with a strength of 7.0 or higher on special measuring scales, or those that caused a lot of damage or hurt many people. The strength of each earthquake is measured using different scales, such as the Richter scale (ML), the moment magnitude scale (Mw), or the surface wave magnitude scale (Ms) for very old earthquakes. However, this list is not complete, and exact information about older earthquakes can be hard to find because modern tools to measure them were not available back then.

Earthquakes M5.5+ around Japan (1900–2016)M7.0–7.9=163 EQs, M8.0+=14 EQs.

History

Japan has a long history of earthquakes. One of the first earthquakes to be carefully recorded happened in the year 599 in what is now Nara Prefecture. This earthquake damaged many buildings.

Scientists have been studying these old earthquakes for many years. A group was formed in 1892 to collect information about past earthquakes, and they published their findings in 1899. Later, after a big earthquake in 1923, a new group called the Earthquake Research Institute was created to continue this important work. Today, the most trusted records of old earthquakes in Japan were put together by a researcher named Tatsuo Usami. His book from 2003 lists 486 earthquakes that happened between the years 416 and 1888.

Earthquake measurement

In Japan, the Shindo scale is used to measure how strong an earthquake feels in different places. This is similar to scales used in other countries, but it has ten levels instead of twelve. The levels go from very light shaking (shindo zero) to very strong shaking (shindo seven).

Earthquakes with shindo four or lower are usually not too bad, but those with shindo five and above can damage buildings, furniture, and pipes. The Japan Meteorological Agency uses this scale to tell people how strong an earthquake is where they live.

List

Strongest earthquakes by prefecture (since 1900)

Images

A historical Japanese news broadsheet from 1855 showing reports about the damage caused by a big earthquake in Edo (now Tokyo).
Historical illustration from 1856 showing the shipwreck of 'The Diana' as depicted in The Illustrated London News.
Illustration showing the geological cause of a major earthquake in central Japan in 1891, highlighting fault lines and surface rupture.
Historical photograph showing the aftermath of an earthquake in Tokyo, Japan, in 1894
A historic bridge in Japan that remained standing after a major earthquake in 1923.
Historical photo showing buildings affected by the 1927 Kita-Tango Earthquake in Mineyama, Japan.
Historical photograph showing the aftermath of the 1943 Tottori earthquake in Japan.
Map showing how the coastline of Ariake Sea in Japan has changed over thousands of years due to natural and human influences.
Historical photo showing damage to Kumamoto Castle after an earthquake in 1889.
Historic photo showing houses moved by a big ocean wave in Japan in 1896.

Related articles

Richter scale
Moment magnitude scale
Surface-wave magnitude
Nara Prefecture
Earthquake Research Institute, University of Tokyo
Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on List of earthquakes in Japan, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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