Earthquakes in Japan

Latest earthquakes in Japan: 4 in the last 24 hours, 104 in the last 30 days. Updated Nov 10, 2026 00:20 UTC.

Japan sits where four tectonic plates meet: the Pacific and Philippine Sea plates dive beneath the Eurasian and North American plates. The result is one of the most seismically active places on Earth, with earthquakes at all depths from shallow to several hundred kilometers. The most powerful earthquake in the country's recorded history is the magnitude 9.1 Tohoku earthquake of March 11, 2011, which ruptured the plate boundary off the northeast coast, sent a devastating tsunami across the Sanriku coast and led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. It is tied for third largest in the USGS catalog. Japan has also experienced the magnitude 8.4 Sanriku earthquake of 1933 and the magnitude 8.2 Tokachi-Oki earthquake of 1968. Because of this history, Japan has strict building codes and one of the densest seismic networks in the world, and its early warning system is a model for other countries. The list below shows recent earthquakes in Japan.