Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that damage was being assessed. A number of houses have collapsed, but there was no abnormality at nearby nuclear facilities, Suga said.

"There was a ka-boom and the whole house violently shook sideways," Takahiko Morita, a resident in Mashiki, a town at the epicenter, told a telephone interview with NHK TV. "Furniture and bookshelves fell down, books were all over the floor."

Morita said there is no power outage in his neighborhood but water supply was cut off. Some houses and walls collapsed, he said.

Keisukei Urata, an official at nearby Uki city, said he was driving home when the quake struck at 9:26 p.m.

He also said he saw some walls around houses collapsing.

Parts of the ceiling at Uki City Hall also collapsed, windows were broken and cabinets fell to the ground, he said.

Kasumi Nakamura, an official in the village of Nishihara near the epicenter, said that the rattling started modestly and grew violent, lasting about 30 seconds.

"Papers, files, flower vases and everything fell on the floor," he told NHK. He said there were aftershocks.

One aftershock measuring 5.7 struck about 40 minutes later, according to Japan's Meteorological Agency.

The US Geological Survey put the quake's preliminary magnitude at 6.2 and said it was 23 kilometers deep. It said there's a low likelihood of casualties but some damage is possible.

Footage on NHK showed a signboard hanging from the ceiling at its local bureau violently shaking. File cabinets rattled, books, files and papers rained down to the floor, and one employee appeared to have fallen off a chair, while others slid underneath their desks to protect their heads.

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