
Dozens of residents have evacuated remote islands in southern Japan that have been shaken by almost 1,600 earthquakes in recent weeks, the local mayor said on Monday.
There have been no important physical damage on the most affected Akuseki Island, even after an earthquake of magnitude 5.1 that hit during the night, said Genichiro Kubo, who is based on another island.
But the shakes almost without stopping since June 21 have caused severe stress to the residents of the area, many of whom have been deprived of sleep.
Of the 89 residents of Akuseki, 44 have evacuated the regional center of Kagoshima on Sunday, while another 15 also left another nearby island, Kubo said at a press conference.
The municipality, which includes seven inhabited islands and five uninhabited, is approximately 11 hours in a Kagoshima ferry.
Since June 21, the area has experienced early Monday, which refers to seismologists as a swarm of 1,582 earthquakes.
Experts have said that they believe that an underwater volcano and magma flows could be the cause. They say they cannot predict how long the tremors will continue.
“We cannot foresee what could happen in the future. We cannot see when this will end,” Mayor Kubo told reporters.
A similar period of intense seismic activity in the area occurred in September 2023, when 346 earthquakes were recorded, according to the Japan weather agency.
Japan is one of the most active countries in the world, sitting on four important tectonic plates along the western edge of the “Fire Ring” of the Pacific.
The archipelago, home of around 125 million people, typically experiences around 1,500 shakes every year and represents about 18 percent of the earthquakes in the world.
Some foreign tourists have kept Japan due to the unfounded fears fueled by social networks that a large earthquake was imminent.
Causing a particular concern was a manga comic reissued in 2021 that predicted a great disaster on July 5, 2025, which did not happen.