2016 Tottori earthquake

What Happened

On 21 October 2016, an earthquake struck central Tottori Prefecture in western Japan. The event registered a moment magnitude of 6.2. It left 32 people injured.

The epicentre lay at coordinates 35.38° north, 133.86° east, placing it in the central part of the prefecture rather than offshore. The shaking was felt across the surrounding region of western Honshu, Japan's main island.

The earthquake occurred during the Heisei period, in the 28th year of the Heisei era — the Japanese imperial calendar then in use, which ran from 1989 to 2019.

Background

Tottori Prefecture occupies the northern edge of the Chūgoku region, facing the Sea of Japan. The area sits near a zone of crustal faults, and earthquakes in this part of Japan tend to be shallow and inland rather than deep-sea events of the kind that generate tsunamis. That shallowness means the shaking is concentrated close to the surface, directly beneath the communities above the fault.

Japan is one of the most seismically active countries on Earth, sitting where several tectonic plates meet. The country maintains a dense network of seismic monitoring stations and a public early-warning system, and earthquakes are a routine part of civic life. Building codes, disaster drills, and the naming conventions for earthquakes all reflect how deeply this shapes Japanese society.

The 2016 event took its place in a long record of Japanese earthquakes. Because the country records and names its earthquakes systematically, each significant event receives an official Japanese designation tied to the place and the date — a practice that makes them easy to identify in news reports, government documents, and school textbooks.

Why It Mattered

The earthquake injured 32 people. That figure places it among the damaging but not catastrophic events in Japan's modern seismic record — serious enough to injure dozens and disrupt daily life across central Tottori, but far short of the destruction caused by the largest earthquakes in Japanese history.

The event fell in the Heisei era, a period of 30 years that ended in 2019. The Heisei name is used in Japan as an official way of dating everything from births to disasters, and the earthquake is recorded as a Heisei 28 event — the 28th year of that era, corresponding to 2016.

For residents of central Tottori, the earthquake was a reminder of the region's seismic exposure. Inland crustal earthquakes of this size can strike with little warning and cause localised damage even when the magnitude is moderate, because the rupture occurs close to the surface and directly beneath populated areas.

The Name in Japanese

The Japanese name of the earthquake is 鳥取県中部地震. Its kana reading is とっとりけんちゅうぶじしん, and its romaji is Tottori-ken Chūbu Jishin.

The name is built from four elements, read in sequence:

• 鳥 — read とっとり (Tottori) here as part of the place name. The character means "bird." On its own it is read tori.
• 取 — also part of とっとり (Tottori). The character means "take" or "grasp." Together, 鳥取 is the name of the prefecture.
• 県 — read けん (ken). It means "prefecture," the standard administrative unit used for Japan's 47 top-level divisions. Tottori Prefecture is one of them.
• 中 — read ちゅう (chū). It means "middle" or "centre."
• 部 — read ぶ (bu). It means "part" or "section." Combined, 中部 (ちゅうぶ, chūbu) means "central part" or "central region."
• 地 — read じ (ji). It means "earth" or "ground."
• 震 — read しん (shin). It means "shake" or "quake." Combined, 地震 (じしん, jishin) means "earthquake."

So the full name breaks down as: Tottori Prefecture (鳥取県) + central part (中部) + earthquake (地震) — "the Central Tottori Prefecture Earthquake." The naming pattern is standard in Japan: place name first, then the geographic portion of that place, then the word for earthquake. Readers who learn the four kanji 県, 中, 部, and 地震 will recognise them in countless other Japanese place names and news headlines.

Key Figures

• Magnitude: 6.2 (moment magnitude scale)
• Injured: 32
• Date: 21 October 2016
• Coordinates: 35.38° N, 133.86° E
• Location: central Tottori Prefecture, Japan
• Era: Heisei 28 (平成28年), within the Heisei period, 1989–2019