Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has canceled his planned four-day trip to Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia as the risk of a potentially powerful earthquake across a wide area in the Pacific Ocean to central Japan has increased, the Japan Meteorological Agency reported, as cited by Kyodo.
The agency issued the first such advisory for the areas around the Nankai Basin hours after the 7.1-magnitude earthquake that shook the southwestern part of the country yesterday.
After attending a peace ceremony in Nagasaki to mark the 79th anniversary of the US atomic bombing, Kishida told a news conference in the city that he had canceled overseas travel to “focus on the government response and the spread of information“ about the potential major earthquake.
„As a high-ranking official in charge of crisis management in the country, as an additional precaution I have to stay in Japan for at least a week,” and the weather agency is urging the public to prepare for such a scenario, Kishida added.
Tonight, he was expected to attend Japan's first-ever summit with the Central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan, and issue a joint statement.
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A meeting was also planned for Monday in Mongolia's capital Ulaanbaatar between the Japanese leader and the country's President Ukhnaagiin Hurelsuh and Prime Minister Luvsanamsrein Ouyun-Erdene.
According to government data, as a result of yesterday's earthquake in Miyazaki Prefecture and two neighboring prefectures, numerous injuries and damage to buildings have been recorded, but so far there have been no reports of deaths.