Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida announced on Friday the cancellation of his trip scheduled for August 9-12 to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia, in response to the alert for a possible large-magnitude earthquake.
The decision comes after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook the southwest of the country on Thursday, raising concerns about a possible seismic catastrophe.
Kishida, speaking at a press conference, said the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) had issued a warning about the possibility of a major earthquake in the Nankai Trough and called on the population to step up their preparations.
The warning, issued Thursday, is the first of its kind by the JMA and comes after a strong earthquake struck the island of Kyushu.
Japanese authorities typically warn of the possibility of aftershocks or earthquakes of similar or larger magnitude within a week, but the JMA believes the recent tremor could be indicative of a potential large-scale earthquake in the Nankai region.
“As prime minister and the person responsible for risk management, I have decided to stay in Japan for at least one week, the period mentioned by the JMA, to coordinate government actions and provide necessary information in case of further seismic events,” Kishida said.
The cancelled trip included important bilateral engagements, such as the signing of an agreement with Mongolia for the exchange of defence equipment and technologies, and participation in the ‘Central Asia plus Japan Dialogue’ summit in Astana, Kazakhstan.
Thursday’s 7.1-magnitude quake did not cause significant property damage. The disaster management agency reported 13 people injured in Miyazaki, Kagoshima and Kumamoto prefectures, several of them from falling objects.
Miyazaki leads the prefecture in terms of injuries, with five. In this area, in the city of Nichinan, the roof of a gymnasium, which was designated as an evacuation shelter and must remain closed, also fell off.
As for material damage related to the earthquake, in nearby Kagoshima prefecture some houses collapsed, while in Miyazaki, also in Nichinan, a rock broke loose and rolled onto the road.
In response to the quake, JR Central announced it would reduce the speed of its trains on the Tokaido bullet train line between Mishima and Mikawa, where quakes of around magnitude 7 are still expected in the coming week.
Situated at the crossroads of several tectonic plates, Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world, with around 1,500 tremors a year, most of which are of low magnitude.
But even the most powerful quakes leave little damage in this country, which has had earthquake-resistant building codes in place for decades and has educated its 125 million people on how to react in such situations.
The Japanese government has previously estimated there is a 70 percent chance of a mega-quake hitting the country in the next three decades. Such a quake could affect a significant portion of Japan’s Pacific coast and threaten some 300,000 people, its experts said.
On January 1 this year, an earthquake in the center of the country caused the deaths of at least 318 people.
The most powerful earthquake recorded in Japan so far was on March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake that triggered a tsunami in the northeast of the country.
An estimated 20,000 people died or went missing in the catastrophe, which also caused the nuclear accident at the Fukushima power plant.
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