EARTHQUAKEM6.0

M6.0 earthquake near Shima, Japan

Map: the earthquake near Shima, Japan, with plate boundaries

A magnitude 6.0 earthquake struck 58 km (36 mi) south-southeast of Shima, Japan on Saturday, October 31, 2026 at 22:15 UTC, at a depth of 352 km (219 mi), according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Quakes this deep are usually felt widely but rarely cause damage. The nearest city of a million or more people is Nagoya, about 149 km (92 mi) away.

USGS’s PAGER impact estimate is GREEN: little or no damage expected.

14 people reported feeling it to USGS “Did You Feel It?”.

MagnitudeM6.0
Depth352 km (219 mi)
Time (UTC)Oct 31 22:15
Location33.82°N 136.99°E
Nearest townShima · 58 km
Energy15 kilotons TNT
Aftershocks M2.5+0
Tsunami flagNo
PAGER alertGREEN
Felt reports14
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Why here?

This earthquake struck about 69 km (43 mi) from the boundary between the Eurasian and Philippine Sea plates. Most earthquakes happen along plate boundaries like this one, where the pieces of Earth’s outer shell collide, pull apart or grind past each other. Stress builds up over years until the rock suddenly slips. At 352 km down, it most likely broke inside a plate that is sinking into the mantle beneath its neighbor, in what geologists call a subduction zone.

The red lines on the map are plate boundaries.

What kind of fault?

USGS’s analysis of the seismic waves shows it was a strike-slip earthquake: the two sides of the fault slid past each other sideways, like California’s San Andreas Fault.

Shaking and impact

The strongest shaking USGS estimates was intensity 3 on the Modified Mercalli scale: weak. USGS’s PAGER system estimates it most likely caused no deaths (90 percent probability). Early estimates are revised as reports come in.

How strong was it?

Magnitude is logarithmic: each whole step releases about 32 times more energy. This magnitude 6.0 released roughly the energy of 15 kilotons of TNT, about as much as the Hiroshima atomic bomb. That is about 1,000 times the energy of a magnitude 4.0, a quake people nearby feel but that rarely causes damage. The strongest earthquake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5 in Chile in 1960, released about 180,000 times more than this one.

Aftershocks

In the first 1 hour after it, USGS recorded no smaller earthquakes of magnitude 2.5 or more within 100 km (62 mi).

Outside the United States, USGS mainly lists quakes of about magnitude 4 and up, so smaller aftershocks there are undercounted.

Earthquake history here

Before this earthquake, USGS had recorded 97 earthquakes of magnitude 6 or larger within 300 km (186 mi) since 1900. The strongest:

Official details, updates and the shaking map: USGS event page.

See every earthquake on October 31, 2026 or earthquakes by day.

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