Magnitude 5.7 quake injures 22 in central Japan

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At least 22 people injured after 5.7-magnitude earthquake strikes Japan independent.co.uk

A magnitude 5.7 earthquake struck central Japan shortly after 1am on Sunday, injuring at least 22 people across Aichi and neighboring prefectures. The Meteorological Agency placed the epicenter roughly 40 kilometers underground in Shizuoka, deep enough to blunt the worst of the shaking, and no tsunami warning was issued.

The quake was felt across a wide band of the country — from Hamamatsu to the ancient capitals of Kyoto and Nara, and into Gifu and Yamanashi, the prefectures that hold Mount Fuji — though not strongly enough to reach Tokyo. Television footage showed shattered storefronts, glass strewn across pavements, and a bookstore with volumes flung from its shelves. Several of the injured fell down stairs while fleeing buildings in the middle of the night. Shinkansen bullet trains were slowed through the affected region as a precaution, since quakes can deform the track itself. The damage profile is instructive. In many seismically active countries, a 5.7 tremor striking beneath a densely populated industrial region — Aichi anchors the corridor that produces much of Japan's automotive output — would produce mass casualties. Here, the casualty list is dominated by people hurt while running, not by buildings that failed. Japan's building code, rewritten and hardened after each major disaster, absorbed the shock; the depth of the epicenter did the rest.

The tremor comes as the country continues rebuilding the Noto peninsula, devastated by a far deadlier quake last year, a reminder that the same geology that demands the code guarantees it will be tested again.

Two decades of enforced engineering turned Sunday's shaking into broken windows and spilled books rather than a death toll.