Moderate quake rocks Japan's Honshu island

A moderate quake with a magnitude of 5.3 jolted the east of Japan's main island of Honshu early on Thursday.

A moderate quake with a magnitude of 5.3 jolted the east of Japan's main island of Honshu early on Thursday, meteorologists said, but there were no immediate reports of casualties or damage.

HT Image

The quake occurred at 2:08 am (2238 IST) with its epicentre near the east coast of Honshu 549 kilometres north of Tokyo, the US Geological Survey said.

Its focus was about 47 kilometres deep.

The reading was based on the open-ended Moment Magnitude scale, now used by US seismologists, which measures the area of the fault that ruptured and the total energy released.