One killed, 40 hurt in Japan Earthquake

A strong earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 7.1 has jolted the coastal area of central Japan on Sunday, killing at least one person and injuring at least 40, public broadcaster NHK reports.

NHK also said at least nine houses had collapsed when the quake struck Japan in the morning.

The focus of the tremor was at a depth of 50km below the seabed off the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa prefecture, about 300km from Tokyo.

NHK said a 52-year-old woman died in Wajima, on the western side of the peninsula, after being trapped under a stone lantern that toppled in her garden. It said about 40 people were being treated in the local hospital for injuries.

"Sprinklers went on, some walls collapsed. It's really bad," a local hotel employee in Wajima told NHK, which showed footage of a tiled roof collapsed into a street and broken glass.

In Nanao, a city with a population of around 60,000 on the peninsula, ambulance services were flooded with calls to help people who had suffered burns and injuries, Kyodo news agency said. A local official told NHK he saw cracks and bumps in roads.

"Books fell off bookshelves and it was the worst shaking I have ever felt," one local official told NHK.

Some trains in the area were halted and people were trapped in elevators.

NHK showed TV footage of stone ornaments toppled in a garden and local residents cleaning up items that had fallen from a Buddhist altar in their home.

A tsunami warning for waves of up to 50cm was issued for Ishikawa prefecture and NHK said small tsunami had already hit in some areas.

Electric power companies said there were no reports of irregularities at nuclear plants in the area.

Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world's most seismically active areas. The country accounts for about 20 per cent of the world's earthquakes of magnitude six or greater.

In October 2004, an earthquake with a magnitude of 6.8 struck the Niigata region in northern Japan, killing 65 people and injuring more than 3,000.

That was the deadliest quake since a magnitude 7.3 tremor hit the city of Kobe in 1995, killing more than 6,400.