A tsunami of about 0.3 metres (1ft) has already reached Yonaguni Island, in south-west Japan.
An alert was issued for the coastal areas of Japan near the southern prefecture of Okinawa, with residents told to leave urgently.
‘Evacuate! Do not stop. Do not go back’
A banner on Japanese national broadcaster NHK told viewers to “Evacuate!”
“Tsunami is coming. Please evacuate immediately,” an anchor on NHK said. “Do not stop. Do not go back.”
The Philippines has also issued a tsunami warning to residents on northern coast, warning 23 provinces where it said “high tsunami waves” were expected to hit.
Japan’s meteorological agency described the earthquake as very shallow, which can cause significant damage.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS) said the quake’s epicentre was 11 miles (18km) south of Taiwan’s Hualien City at a depth of about 21 miles.
Live TV footage from the Okinawa region’s ports, including Naha, showed vessels heading out to sea, possibly in efforts to protect their ships.
Taiwan is regularly hit by earthquakes because the island lies near the junction of two tectonic plates.
The earthquake was “the strongest in 25 years”, according to Wu Chien-fu the director of Taipei’s Seismology Centre. referring to a 7.6-magnitude quake that hit Taiwan in September 1999, killing around 2,400 people in the deadliest natural disaster in the island’s history.
Earthquakes are common in Japan, one of the world’s most seismically active areas. Japan accounts for about one-fifth of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or greater.
The country was rocked by its deadliest quake in eight years on New Year’s Day when a 7.6-magnitude quake struck in Ishikawa prefecture, on the western coast. More than 230 people died in the quake that left 44,000 homes fully or partially destroyed.
On March 11, 2011, the northeast coast was struck by a magnitude 9 earthquake, the strongest quake in Japan on record, and a massive tsunami. Those events triggered a nuclear accident at the Fukushima plant, the world’s worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl a quarter of a century earlier.
This is a breaking news story and will be updated
