A major earthquake has rocked Japan’s northern coast, with the country’s meteorological agency recording several tsunami waves and local media reporting injuries. 

The United States Geological Survey said the magnitude 7.6 quake struck at 2.15pm GMT (3.15am NZT) off Misawa on Japan’s Pacific coast, at a depth of 53km. 

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning, with one wave hitting a port in the northern region of Aomori, where Misawa is located, at 11.43pm (3.43am NZT). 

Several more waves reached the coast, measuring up to 50cm, the agency said. 

Public broadcaster NHK cited a hotel employee in the city of Hachinohe in Aomori as saying there had been some injuries as a result of the quake. 

Live footage showed shattered glass fragments scattered across roads. 

A 7.6-magnitude earthquake rocked Japan's northern coast late on December 8, with the country's meteorological agency recording two 40-centimetre tsunami waves and local media reporting injuries. Photo / Greg Baker, AFP 

Hachinohe residents fled their homes to seek shelter in the city hall, NHK said. 

The quake was also felt in the northern hub of Sapporo, where alarms rang on smartphones to alert residents. 

A reporter for NHK in Hokkaido described a horizontal shaking of around 30 seconds that made him unable to keep standing as the earthquake struck. 

The meteorological agency earlier warned a tsunami of up to 3m was expected to hit Japan’s Pacific coast. 

Top government spokesman Minoru Kihara urged residents to stay in a safe place until the warning had been lifted. 

“Even after an initial wave, a second or third wave of an even greater height can arrive,” he told reporters. 

‘Megaquake’ 

Kihara said he had “received no reports yet of abnormalities” from two nuclear power plants in northern Japan, adding that probes are ongoing in other nuclear facilities. 

In 2011, a magnitude 9.0 quake triggered a tsunami that left 18,500 people dead or missing and caused a devastating meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant. 

Shortly after the quake, Tohoku Electric Power said in a post on X that the safety equipment at its Higashidori nuclear power plant in Aomori and its Onagawa nuclear plant in the Miyagi region had not shown any abnormalities. 

People staying in a elementary school gymnasium that has been turned into a shelter at Kamaishi Elementary School in Kamaishi City, Miyagi Prefecture, after a magnitude 7.6 earthquake that struck off the east coast of Aomori Prefecture. Photo / Ikuya Oshio, Yomiuri, the Yomiuri Shimbun via AFP 

Japan sits on top of four major tectonic plates along the western edge of the Pacific “Ring of Fire” and is one of the world’s most tectonically active countries. 

The archipelago, home to around 125 million people, experiences around 1500 jolts every year. 

The vast majority are mild, although the damage they cause varies according to their location and depth below the Earth’s surface. 

Quakes are extremely hard to predict, but in January a government panel marginally increased the probability of a major jolt in the Nankai Trough off Japan in the next 30 years to 75 to 82%. 

The government then released a new estimate in March saying that such a “megaquake” and subsequent tsunami could cause as many as 298,000 deaths and trillions of dollars in damages. 

- Agence France-Presse