No Death Report

A powerful earthquake hit a broad swathe of northeastern Japan Monday, tangling communications and rocking buildings as far away as Tokyo about 280 miles to the south.

Kyodo news agency said 104 people were injured, five seriously. The earthquake hit a mostly agricultural area that has several large cities and some high-tech factories. There were no reports of deaths.

The Meteorological Agency said the earthquake measured seven on the Richter scale, about the same as a devastating earthquake in the Japanese city of Kobe eight years ago.

Damage was limited and there was no danger of a tsunami, or giant wave, because the quake's epicenter, 12 miles off the east coast, was 44 miles deep.

"It is absolutely inconceivable that there could be damage similar to that after the Hanshin Awaji earthquake," Yoshitada Konoike, minister of disaster management, told a news conference.

The Hanshin Awaji earthquake devastated Kobe in western Japan in 1995 and left 6,430 dead. The epicenter of that quake was much shallower, a characteristic that usually results in more violent shaking.

Monday's earthquake, the largest to hit Japan in three years, shattered windows, buckled roads and produced cracks in buildings in Sendai, a city of around one million about 52 miles south of the epicenter. Ten families were evacuated from their homes for fear of landslides.

"Things fell from the shelves and light bulbs burst. Even the heavy candles from the Buddhist altar fell right over and I couldn't imagine anything strong enough to do that," said Shideko Sato, a saleswoman among over one thousand passengers stranded in Sendai station after the bullet train services were stopped.

TOUGHER CODES SAVE LIVES

Satoru Sugai, a local disaster prevention official, said the limited damage was most likely due to tougher building codes introduced after a major earthquake struck Sendai in 1978.

"It seemed like quite a large shake, but within the prefecture there haven't been reports of much damage so we are very relieved," Sugai said.

About 35,000 homes temporarily lost power supplies but electricity was restored for most within a few hours.

Public broadcaster NHK said one highway in northeastern Japan was totally closed. Phone networks were snarled.

In Tokyo, buildings shook violently and lamps swayed, sending workers scurrying to the doors.

Japan sits atop a junction of at least three tectonic plates, immense slabs of the earth's crust whose movements cause earthquakes.

NUCLEAR SHUTDOWN

The yen fell in European markets on news of the quake, which came after Tokyo markets closed.

Japan's Tohoku Electric Power Co Inc said an 825,000-kilowatt (kW) nuclear reactor, the Onagawa No.3 unit in northern Japan, automatically shut down due to the quake.

Japan's largest oil refiner, Nippon Oil Corp, said it had started shutting down its 145,000 barrels per day Sendai refinery, although its facilities appeared to be fine.