Photo/Illutration The razed area around the Wajima morning market in Ishikawa Prefecture remains almost unchanged on Feb. 29, about two months after the Noto Peninsula earthquake. (Shinnosuke Ito)

Every time an earthquake occurs in Japan, social media sites are filled with posts saying things like: “There have been many earthquakes lately, haven’t there?”

Scientists who actually know about such things say statistics show no recent increase in quake frequency. But they do warn about waves of online quake information, often inaccurate or blatantly false, that could be affecting people’s perceptions of seismic activity.

According to the Japan Meteorological Agency, 89 earthquakes of intensity of 4 or higher on the Japanese seismic scale of 7 were observed nationwide from January to the end of April this year. An intensity of 4 creates shaking that “surprises most people,” the JMA said.

Over the same period for the last three years, the number of earthquakes of intensity 4 or higher was nine in 2023, 22 in 2022, and 21 in 2021.

The 89 figure of this year stands out.

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Many posts on X say, “There have been many earthquakes lately, haven’t there?” (Ryo Oyama)

But 66 of those tremors were related to the destructive Noto Peninsula earthquake that hit on New Year’s Day.

If those quakes are deducted from the total, 2024 has been a fairly normal year so far.

Naoshi Hirata, a professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo who chairs the central government’s earthquake research committee, was asked about the matter at a news conference in April.

“If you look at the statistics, there is no indication that earthquakes are very frequent right now,” Hirata said.

From May 2014 to April 2024, Japan recorded 717 earthquakes of intensity 4 or higher.

For the previous 10-year period, from May 2004 to April 2014, the number of such earthquakes was 831. And for the decade before that, from May 1994 to April 2004, the figure was 701.

The figures have remained generally unchanged so far this century.

Hirata noted that even in the world of seismology, which analyzes earthquakes on a long-term scale, such as 100 years, “it is normal for earthquakes to occur with this frequency in Japan.”

Katsuya Yamori, a professor at Kyoto University’s Disaster Prevention Research Institute who is an expert on the psychology of disaster prevention, had a theory on why some social media users feel there are so many more earthquakes these days.

“It is probably because people have come to experience earthquakes as a social phenomenon,” he said.

If a major quake struck Japan in the Edo Period (1603-1867), when there was no internet or TV, people in faraway areas would not “experience” it, Yamori said.

In contrast, “People who live in the internet society experience earthquakes through the words, actions and images of others on TV and the internet, even if they do not feel the tremors themselves and do not see collapsed buildings in front of them,” Yamori said.

Furthermore, smartphones and social media have become common communication tools, and news sites and disaster prevention applications have been enhanced.

“People have more opportunities to come into contact with information on quakes in distant areas, so they now experience quakes not only as natural phenomena but also as social phenomena,” Yamori said.

In other words, the recent “increase in earthquakes” is more about the “increase in postings and information about earthquakes,” he said.

Although it is useful for people to share their earthquake stories to increase awareness in preparing for disasters, equating information found online with real experiences can be dangerous.

After the Noto Peninsula earthquake, many false rescue requests were posted on social media.

Uploaded images of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami and the 2004 Kumamoto Earthquakes were falsely described as damage on the Noto Peninsula.

Many people believed such fake information was real and spread it out of good intentions.

Satoshi Harada, who heads the JMA’s earthquake and tsunami monitoring division, urges people to “improve their daily preparedness rather than feel afraid because they believe there are many more earthquakes occurring.”

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