What you see

• The glowing dots under the ground are hypocenters. Small dots (past quakes) are colored by depth, large dots (recent quakes) by maximum Shindo (JMA seismic intensity), and their size shows the magnitude.
• The band of hypocenters sinking diagonally beneath Japan is the very shape of the Pacific and Philippine Sea plates diving under the islands (the Wadati–Benioff zone). It stands out when viewed from the side with “South” or “East”.
• Red lines are trenches and troughs (plate boundaries). Depth and terrain are exaggerated for visibility (defaults: depth ×2, terrain ×10).

Controls

• Drag to rotate, right-drag (two fingers) to pan, scroll (pinch) to zoom.
• Click a dot or a list item to fly to the hypocenter and replay the spreading shaking (P and S waves) and the Shindo at each station.
• Choose a period on the timeline at the bottom and press ▶ to fast-forward earthquake activity. Drag the bar to show any moment.
• Press “Globe” at the bottom right (G), or zoom far out, to see the whole Earth with world earthquakes and plate boundaries. Zoom back in on Japan to return to the detailed view.
• In the “Historic” tab of the list, pick a major earthquake such as the 2011 Tohoku or the 2024 Noto Peninsula earthquake to fast-forward the quakes before and after the mainshock. It pauses at the mainshock to show the shaking spread.
• Press “Section” at the bottom right and click two points on the map to cut the underground along that line. Only hypocenters near the line (±50 km by default) remain, and a distance–depth cross-section appears at the bottom. You can also pick ready-made examples such as Tohoku or Izu–Bonin.
• The share button at the top right copies a link to what you are looking at (the selected quake, section, historic quake, globe and camera). The link opens the same view.
• Keyboard: Space play/pause, 1–4 views, S section, G globe, R reset view, Esc close

Data

• Earthquake reports and intensity stations: Japan Meteorological Agency (bosai JSON)
• Live updates and Earthquake Early Warnings: P2P Quake WebSocket API
• Past hypocenters: USGS Earthquake Catalog
• Terrain and bathymetry: Mapzen Terrain Tiles (AWS Open Data; SRTM, GMTED2010, ETOPO1 and more)
• Prefecture borders: dataofjapan/land (source: Global Map Japan)
• World plate boundaries (globe): Peter Bird (2003) PB2002 (converted by Hugo Ahlenius / Nordpil, ODC-By 1.0)
• Rendering: three.js

Please note

This tool is for reference only. Early Warning displays can be late or missing. Arrival times are rough estimates using simple speeds (P-wave 7 km/s, S-wave 4 km/s). To stay safe, follow official information from JMA and local governments, TV, radio and the emergency alerts on your phone.

English place names come from JMA's English data. Early Warning areas are shown by prefecture, and some messages from P2P Quake may appear in Japanese. Times are Japan Standard Time (JST).