At least two people have died and a number were injured after an earthquake jolted southern Japan, toppling buildings and disrupting power supplies.
Officials say more people could be trapped under collapsed buildings.
Search crews scrambled to dig through rubble in southern Japan, looking for people trapped under collapsed buildings Thursday night.
The two deaths occurred in Mashiki, One person died in a collapsed house, and the other died in a fire caused by the quake.
At least 135 people were hospitalized in the city of Kumamoto.
In addition to destroying 19 houses, the quake hurled items off store shelves and littered streets with rubble.
No tsunami warning was issued after the magnitude 6.4 quake, which struck at 9:26 east of Kumamoto city, on the island of Kyushu.
But Japan's seismology office recorded the shaking at some places to be as intense as the huge magnitude 9 earthquake that hit the country in 2011.
That triggered a tsunami in double disaster that left more than 18,000 people dead or missing and led to meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.