A shallow earthquake of MJMA 6.7 on October 18, 1995, at about 50km southeast off Kikai-jima in the Ryukyu Islands caused slope landslides, subsidence of concrete slabs at fishing ports and collapses of walls piled up with coral ragged stones. Several fishing boats moored to wharves were damaged by tsunami; four boats were turned over at ports in Amami-Oshima.
From May 19 to 30, 1995, earthquakes of MJMA≤4.1 had occurred in the focal area after a long seismic quiescence since the 1911 Kikai-jima Earthquake of M=8.0. Some of them were felt in JMA intensity 1 or 2 at Kikai-jima. Numerous felt shocks also struck the island immediately after the main shock; 62 and 125 shocks on October 18 and 19, respectively. Numbers of aftershocks decreased rapidly, though they lasted through the end of 1996.
The damage distribution of the 1911 event being compared with that of the 1995 event, their focal areas were considered to overlap with each other. It was, however, possibly an interplate earthquake of a thrust fault type in contrast with the 1995 event of a normal fault type in the subducting plate, because the first motions of P wave at Naze and of tsunami wave at Kikai-jima were reversed between the two events.
