A 7.1-magnitude earthquake rattled Kumamoto prefecture on Japan's Kyushu island on July 28, 2026, cracking roads, flattening homes and triggering an explosion at a shopping mall. But one video widely claimed online to show the tremor is old and unrelated, coming instead from a 2024 quake that hit the Noto Peninsula of the country's main island Honshu.
"Scenes from Japan as it's hit with a 7.1 earthquake," says a July 28, 2026 post on X sharing the clip, which shows tree branches falling and what appear to be stone pillars swaying at a traditional Japanese shrine.
Similar posts featuring the same video recording cropped up across X and other platforms, in English as well as Chinese and Spanish.
The footage spread as rescuers searching for survivors combed through the tangled wreckage of the Aeon Mall Kumamoto, where a massive explosion -- likely caused by a gas leak -- followed a 7.1-magnitude earthquake on July 28 that some locals said was the strongest tremor they had felt in their lifetimes.
Tens of thousands of residents were without power and water on July 29 as the death toll mounted.
AFP has verified and distributed many videos locals captured of the quake's impact and aftermath in the Kumamoto region.
But the clip spreading widely across social media is from a prior earthquake -- a 7.5-magnitude tremor that rippled through the Noto Peninsula on January 1, 2024, killing hundreds of people.
Reverse image searches surfaced the footage in news coverage of the 2024 quake, with credit to a social media user who posted it to X (archived here, here and here).
In a subsequent post on YouTube, the original poster said it took place at Onominato Shrine in the city of Kanazawa, on the island of Honshu (archived here).
Google Street View imagery and photos uploaded by visitors show the same structures, corroborating the location.
AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about earthquakes here.