A fairly strong earthquake with a magnitude of 5.5 shook northern Wakayama Prefecture on Tuesday evening, the Meteorological Agency said, but caused little damage, no reported injuries, and no tsunami warning was issued.

There were no immediate reports of damage, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference after the 7:18 p.m. quake, which measured upper 5 on the Japanese seismic intensity scale of 7 and was followed by several aftershocks including one with a magnitude of 4.4 that occurred 16 minutes later.

All local train services operated by West Japan Railway Co. in the western prefecture south of Osaka were briefly suspended, but the quake did not affect expressways, bullet train services, or nuclear power plants, according to local officials.

The disaster prevention office of the Wakayama prefectural government said a boulder fell from a hillside in Hidakagawa, and broken windows were discovered in Hirogawa, but added no injuries or substantial damage to property was reported. The temblor registered upper 5 in both towns.

Moderate jolts were registered across a wide swath of western Japan, including Tokushima, Kagawa, Hyogo, Okayama and Hiroshima prefectures, the meteorological agency said.

Shaking was also felt as far as Shizuoka in central Japan and Saga in the southwestern main island of Kyushu, it said.

Akira Nagai, a senior agency official, denied any link between the temblor and the magnitude 9.0 earthquake off the northeastern coast in March or the anticipated Tonankai-Nankai earthquakes believed possible in the near future in central or western Japan.

But he warned of possible aftershocks with an intensity of 4 to lower 5 over the next few days.

The agency revised upward the magnitude of the quake from the preliminary figure of 5.4. The focus of the quake was located at a depth of 7 kilometers, revised from 10 kilometers.