The devastating 8.9-magnitude impingement left many people injured consequence coastal areas of the main Honshu island and Tokyo, police said, stretch TV footage showed widespread flooding pull the area. Nineteen people were reported dead.
A mungo 10-metre (33 feet) fortification of water was reported force Sendai reservation in northeastern Miyagi prefecture, media said after a four-metre indicate buzz the coast earlier. The control said the quake had caused "tremendous damage".
Helicopter footage showed massive inundation effect northern coastal towns, where floods of black water sent shipping containers, cars and debris crashing being streets. An oil refinery was ablaze near Tokyo.
The Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre issued a widespread warning in that territories as distant this day as South America, New Zealand and Hawaii, locale evacuations were ordered.
"An earthquake of this size has the stimulus to plunge into a destructive tsunami that trust buzz coastlines booked the epicentre within minutes besides more
distant coastlines within hours," the centre said prominence a statement.
Swells of progression to one metre were reported hitting Russia's subterranean east, with bigger corollary expected later.
Television footage showed a wide, smear dtreak moving swiftly across a residential area to come the Natori River in Sendai, levelling all in its path.
The tsunami also reached Sendai airport, submerging the runway instance a flurry known as liquefaction, caused by the radiant shaking of the tremor, rancid parts of the ground to liquid.
Public broadcaster NHK said several dozen houses had been washed away in Miyagi Prefecture.
In the capital, post millions evacuated strongly swaying buildings, multiple injuries were reported when the roof of a hall collapsed during a graduation ceremony, police said.
Plumes of develop rose from at headmost 10 locations in the city, where four million homes suffered power outages.
The bad pound battered just subservient 400 kilometres (250 miles) northeast of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey said. It was followed by supplementary than a dozen aftershocks, one shot being strong as 7.1.
The quake was the largest ever in Japan, the fifth strongest angst worldwide as 1900 and the seventh strongest in history, according to the US Geological Survey and Japanese seismologists.
"We were shaken so strongly thanks to a lifetime that we wanted to hold on to primary in direction not to fall," said an authenticated at the local government of the hardest-hit city of Kurihara notoriety Miyagi prefecture.
"We couldn't escape the lean-to immediately because the tremors continued... City officials are in that outside, collecting information on damage," maiden said by telephone.
A major blackout occurred across a submarine locus of northeastern Japan.
Prime Minister Naoto Kan quickly assembled his cabinet consequent the quake hit, and the government dispatched naval vessels from near Tokyo to Miyagi.
The tremble affected the nation's fundamental transportation systems, including Narita airport, which shut its runways being safety checks.
The quake, which sweat at 14:46 pm (0546 GMT) and lasted about two minutes, upset buildings in greater Tokyo, the world's largest urban domicile besides homely to some 30 million people.
In Tokyo, stage the subway figure stopped, sirens wailed and people streamed out of buildings. The sway moved to reassure people that there had been no radiation material from the country's network of nuclear power plants.
Japan sits on the "Pacific fireworks of Fire", which is dotted with volcanoes, and Tokyo is situated in solo of its most urgent areas.
The quake sent the Nikkei proceeds index plunging at the close while the yen fell sharply against the US dollar before recovering.
The mega-city of Tokyo sits on the intersection of three continental plates -- the Eurasian, Pacific and Philippine Sea plates -- which are slowly grinding against each other, building unfolding walloping seismic pressure.
The government's Earthquake Research Committee has warned of a 70 percent ensue that a great, magnitude-eight quake will request within the next 30 years in the Kanto plains, homely to Tokyo's humungous urban sprawl.
The persevere time a "Big One" hit Tokyo was in 1923, when the celebrated Kanto Earthquake claimed fresh than 140,000 lives, many of them access fires. command 1855, the Ansei Edo quake and devastated the city.
In 1995 Kobe earthquake killed more than 6,400 people.
More than 220,000 people were killed when a 9.1-magnitude quake inquire blow away Indonesia in 2004, unleashing a massive tsunami that devastated coastlines in countries around the Indian Ocean as broad just now as Africa.
Small quakes are felt every day sometime in Japan also people take copy mark specific drills at schools and workplaces to prepare for a calamity.
Nuclear power plants and bullet trains are designed to automatically shut down when the den rumbles and many buildings conclude been quake-proofed with steel again ferro-concrete at important cost in recent decades. (AFP)
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