Minor tsunami hits North Japan after 6.8 quake: USGS, agency

A minor tsunami hit the coast of northern Japan Tuesday morning after an advisory was issued following a 6.8-magnitude earthquake in northern Japan, the USGS and the Japanese meteorological agency said.

A wave of 10 centimetres (four inches) was monitored on the shore of Miyako, eastern Iwate, at 8:47 am (2347 GMT Monday) after the agency warned a tsunami of up to one metre (3.3 feet) was forecast to hit the region.

The US Geological Survey said the quake had a magnitude of 6.8. The Japanese meteorological agency had earlier recorded it as 6.9.

The tremor struck at 8:06 am in the Pacific some 210 kilometres (130 miles) east of Miyako at a depth of 10 kilometres.

There were no immediate reports of injuries or casualties following the quake and minor tsunami, local media said.

Large areas of the coastline covered by the advisory were damaged by the 2011 quake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people and triggered a nuclear accident in Fukushima.

Local authorities in Iwate issued evacuation advisories to more than 19,000 people, Japan's public broadcaster NHK said.

Japan is hit by around a fifth of the world's powerful quakes every year and sits at the conjunction of several tectonic plates.

There was no damage to any of nuclear reactors in the region as they have been off-line since 2011, NHK said.

The 9.0 undersea quake triggered a massive tsunami four yeas ago that swamped cooling systems at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan's northeast, sparking the worst atomic accident in a generation.

Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated around the plant amid fears of rising radiation.