Asia

Tsunami alert in northeastern Japan after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake

The Japanese government orders the evacuation of the population in coastal areas to "elevated zones".

View of a beach in Kanagawa prefecture
ARA
20/04/2026
1 min

BarcelonaNortheastern Japan is on tsunami alert after a 7.4 magnitude earthquake was recorded in the last few hours. The country's Meteorological Agency (JMA) has warned of the possibility of waves up to three meters high in various prefectures, from Hokkaido to Fukushima, and the government has ordered the evacuation of coastal and riverine areas.

The epicenter of the quake has occurred in Pacific waters, at a depth of 10 kilometers, but according to some agencies it has even shaken some buildings in Tokyo, hundreds of kilometers away. It is currently unknown if any damage has occurred.

The Japanese government has ordered evacuations in "elevated areas" of the population located in the affected areas and has activated an emergency team to provide "all necessary support" in the face of the alert, as disseminated through the social network X by the office of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.

Japan is located on the so-called Ring of Fire, one of the most seismically active zones in the world, and suffers earthquakes with relative frequency, which is why its infrastructure is specially designed to withstand tremors, as highlighted by the Efe agency.

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