Following the warning, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida canceled a planned visit to Central Asia out of caution, bullet trains were slowed, NHK aired a video urging caution, some semiconductor-related factories temporarily halted production, and some beaches in the affected areas have been closed for the time being, according to local reports.
A massive earthquake in an area known as the Nankai Trough could be even more destructive than the earthquake and tsunami that devastated the northern coast of Honshu in March 2011. The region, where the Philippine Sea Plate subducts under the Eurasian Plate, experiences large earthquakes every 100 to 150 years.
Prevention System
The Earthquake Risk Increase Prevention and Warning System, introduced in 2019, is triggered if a magnitude 6.8 or higher earthquake strikes areas where megathrust faults are expected to occur, or if abnormal plate movement is detected. Depending on the size of the earthquake at the time, authorities can issue different levels of alert, and in some cases, warn people to evacuate areas at risk of a tsunami for up to a week.
“This is advice to prepare for the possibility that further major earthquakes will occur in the future,” Kishida told reporters in Nagasaki, where he was attending a ceremony marking the 79th anniversary of the atomic bombing. “We are not warning people to evacuate in advance, nor are we predicting that an earthquake will occur within a certain period of time, but as this is the first time this has happened, I think the public will be very anxious.” Hours after Kishida spoke, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake struck Kanagawa and shook buildings in Tokyo. NHK said there was no risk of a tsunami.
