A powerful earthquake has struck off the northern Japanese coast, and the Japan Meteorological Agency has issued a tsunami alert in the region.
The quake registering a preliminary magnitude of 7.4 occurred off the coast of Sanriku in northern Japan about 4.53pm (5.53pm AEST), at a depth of about 10 kilometres below the sea surface, the agency said.
Japan's NHK public television said a tsunami of up to 3 metres could hit the area shortly.
It's 15 years since a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011, ravaged parts of northern Japan, caused more than 22,000 deaths and forced nearly half a million people to flee their homes, most of them due to tsunami damage.
Some 160,000 people fled their homes in Fukushima because of the radiation spewed from the tsunami-hit Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. About 26,000 of them haven't returned because they resettled elsewhere, their hometowns remain off-limits or they have lingering concerns about radiation.
More to come
