The Japanese Meteorological Agency (JMA) said the tremor had hit Kumamoto prefecture today at 2.16pm (5.16am GMT), but stressed there was no risk of a tsunami as a result of it. The quake, which happened at a dept of just over six miles, registered a lower 5 on the Japanese earthquake scale, equivalent to 4.4 on the standard moment magnitude scale in the town of Nagomi, which replaced the Richter magnitude scale in the 1970s. There were no immediate reports of any injuries as a result of the earthquake.
A Nagomi Municipal Office worker told the Japan Times: “The span of the tremor was very short, and nothing fell from shelves.”
On January 3, Nagomi was hit by an earthquake with a magnitude of 5, with the JMA warning about the possibility of aftershocks over the next week.
Five days later, another quake measuring 6.3 on the scale struck at a depth of 10 miles north-northwest of Nishinoomote on the island of Tangegashima in Kagoshima Prefecture.
The quake happened at a depth of 24 miles and was centred 73 miles southeast of the city of Kagoshima in south of Kyushu.
After the most recent quake, Kyushu Electric Power Company has offered reassurances to residents by saying it had identified no abnormalities at its two nuclear plants in the prefectures of Saga and Kagoshima.
Earthquakes are very common in Japan, which is one of the world’s most seismically active areas.
The country is is located within the Ring of Fire, a band of heightened seismic activity which stretches 25,000 miles around the Pacific basin.
Ben van der Pluijm, a scientist at the University of Michigan, told Express.co.uk last year: “The Ring is a huge geological feature and the primary source of major earthquakes and volcanoes in the world.
“For example Japan is in the Ring of Fire and Japan is basically one giant volcano.
“That’s why they are so good at predicting when eruptions and earthquakes are going to happen.”
Mr van de Pluijm correctly predicted that by the end of 2018, there would be more than 13 earthquakes measuring 7 or more worldwide – in fact there were 16, most of which were in the Ring.
In 2011, an earthquake measuring 9.1 off the coast of the Japanese island of Tohaku, the most powerful ever recorded in the country, resulted in the deaths of almost 16,000.
A tsunami with waves of up to 133 metres in height travelled up to six miles inland.
In addition, three reactors at the Fukushima Daichi Nuclear Power Plant went into meltdown.
Hundreds of thousands of thousands of people evacuated.
The World Bank estimated the total cost to be more than £180billion, making it the most costly natural disaster in history.