Tokyo — A powerful earthquake struck off the northern Japanese coast Monday, prompting the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) to issue a tsunami alert in the region.
The quake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.5 occurred off the coast of Sanriku in northern Japan at around 4:53 p.m. (2:53 a.m. Eastern on Sunday), at a depth of about 6 miles below the sea surface, the agency said.
The JMA reported the first tsunami waves, about three feet high, hitting a port in Kuji, in the northern Iwate Prefecture.
This photo shows a warning message on a screen from a live feed on NHK with tsunami alert after an earthquake hit northern Japan, in Tokyo on April 20, 2026.
Philip FONG /AFP via Getty Images
A tsunami wave of about 2.6 feet was detected at the Kuji port in the Iwate prefecture within one hour of the quake, and a smaller tsunami wave of 1.3 feet was recorded at another port in the prefecture, the agency said.
The tsunami alert and advisory were still in place, with mentions of a wave of up to 10 feet, but The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said the tsunami threat from the quake "has now passed."
The agency urged residents in the region to stay away from the coast or along rivers and take shelter on higher ground. It also cautioned people in the area against possible aftershocks for about a week.
Iwate and three other northern prefectures issued non-binding evacuation advisories to more than 128,000 residents, according to the disaster management agency.
The Fire and Disaster Management Agency said officials are assessing the situation but so far no damage or injuries have been reported, including at power stations and other facilities.
The Nuclear Regulation Authority said nuclear power plants and related facilities in the region were all intact and no abnormalities were detected.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi told reporters in Tokyo that the government had established an emergency task force, and television screens flashed warnings for people in Iwate, Aomori and Hokkaido to evacuate.
"Residents in areas under tsunami warnings should immediately evacuate to higher ground or safe elevated locations," she said.
National public broadcaster NHK showed video of ships heading out of a port in Hokkaido in anticipation of the waves, and Japan's Kyodo news agency said high-speed bullet train services in Aomori were suspended.
It has been 15 years since a magnitude 9.0 earthquake struck, unleashing a massive tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaging parts of northern Japan. More than 22,000 people were killed and nearly half a million people were forced to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage.
Some 160,000 people fled their homes in the Fukushima Prefecture because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven't returned because they resettled elsewhere, their hometowns remain off-limits or they have lingering concerns about radiation.
There were initial reports in Japanese media that at least two nuclear power plants in the northeast region under a tsunami warning on Monday were thus far unaffected by the earthquake. Both of the plants are currently offline.
It was the tsunami that came after the 2011 temblor that caused most of the damage at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, however.
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