Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has dropped plans for a trip to Central Asia after weather experts warned that the risk of a Pacific coast “megaquake” had increased following an earthquake on the southwestern island of Kyushu.
The magnitude 7.1 quake struck Kyushu on Thursday injuring eight people and triggering a tsunami warning.
Kishida had been due to leave on Friday for Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia.
“As the prime minister with the highest responsibility for crisis management, I decided I should stay in Japan for at least a week,” he told reporters.
Kishida added that the public must be feeling “very anxious” after the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) issued its first advisory under a new system drawn up following the magnitude 9.0 earthquake in 2011 that caused a deadly tsunami and nuclear disaster and killed some 18,500 people.
“The likelihood of a new major earthquake is higher than normal, but this is not an indication that a major earthquake will definitely occur,” the JMA said.
Kishida’s trip was cancelled so the government could prepare for any eventuality, public broadcaster NHK reported.
The JMA warning concerns the Nankai Trough, an 800km (497-mile) long trench on the floor of the Pacific where two tectonic plates meet and where previous earthquakes have triggered giant tsunamis.
On Friday, a magnitude 5.3 earthquake hit Tokyo and eastern parts of Japan. Kishida said the government had not received any reports of major damage.
The quake’s epicentre was in the Kanagawa prefecture, at a depth of 10km (6.2 miles), according to JMA.
Kanagawa does not lie within the Nankai Trough zone.
The last earthquake along the Nankai Trough was on December 21, 1946.
Sitting on top of four major tectonic plates, the Japanese archipelago of 125 million people sees some 1,500 earthquakes every year, most of them minor.
Even with larger tremors the impact is usually contained, thanks to advanced building techniques and well-practised emergency response procedures.
The government has said previously there was a roughly 70 percent chance of a megaquake within the next 30 years.
It could affect a large swath of the Pacific coastline of Japan and threaten an estimated 300,000 lives in the worst-case scenario, according to experts.
