December 30, 1703 Earthquake: Off SW Boso Peninsula, Japan

Name: December 30, 1703 Earthquake: Off SW Boso Peninsula, Japan
Start: 1703-12-30
Location: Off SW Boso Peninsula, Japan

December 30, 1703 · M8.2 · 5,233 deaths · 20,162 houses destroyed

A magnitude 8.2 earthquake struck Off SW Boso Peninsula, Japan on December 30, 1703 at 17:00 UTC. It killed 5,233 people.

Map

Where it struck, with the other significant earthquakes within 200 km. Circles are sized and colored by magnitude; select one for its page.

The earthquake

Date: December 30, 1703
Time: 17:00 UTC
Place: Off SW Boso Peninsula, Japan
Magnitude: 8.2 (Ms)
Magnitude scales: Ms 8.2 · Unspecified 8.2
Tsunami: Yes: the tsunami it caused
Epicenter: 35.000° N, 140.000° E
Country: Japan
Region: East Asia

Ms: surface-wave magnitude. Unspecified: the method was not stated in the published sources. NCEI’s headline magnitude is the best of these for the earthquake.

The toll

Deaths: 5,233
Damage: Extreme (about $25 million or more)
Houses destroyed: 20,162

Where the literature gives no number, NCEI records a description on a scale of 1 to 4, printed here in its words. Damage is in millions of US dollars of the year of the event, not adjusted for inflation.

From Wikipedia

The 1703 Genroku earthquake (元禄大地震, Genroku Daijishin) occurred at 02:00 local time on December 31 (17:00 December 30 UTC). The epicenter was near Edo, the forerunner of present-day Tokyo, in the southern part of the Kantō region, Japan. An estimated 2,300 people were killed by the destruction and subsequent fires. The earthquake triggered a major tsunami which caused many additional casualties, giving a total death toll of at least 5,233, possibly up to 200,000. Genroku is a Japanese era spanning from 1688 through 1704.

Text from Wikipedia, “1703 Genroku earthquake”, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Quoted as written; the full article has the rest.

What the record says

NCEI’s account, from the sources it cites.

Reference #414:

December 31, 1703. About 2:00 [local time], there was a strong earthquake in the prefectures of Fukushima, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Chiba, Saitama, Tokyo, Kanagawa, Yamanashi and Shizouka. The greatest destruction took place in Kanagawa Prefecture (Kamak'ura, Katase, Fujisawa, Hiratsuka, Oiso, Shimjuku, Odawara, Hakone and other places and in the Shinagawa region (Tokyo). There was no destruction at Nikko. A weak shock was felt at Kyoto. A rather strong earthquake was felt on Hachijo Island. It was accompanied by a loud underground rumble, although there was no destruction of any kind. The tsunami which arose after the earthquake was observed from the Sanriku Coast to the Kii Peninsula and on the Bonin islands... Some settlements suffered not only from this earthquake and tsunami, but also from the large fires which broke out as a result of the shocks. An especially large fire broke out at Odawara. In Kanagawa and Shizouka Prefectures, in all, 8,007 homes were destroyed, 563 homes burned down, and 2,291 people died. (the bulk of the data apply to Kanagawa Prefecture). In all, according to official data, 20,162 homes suffered damage and 5,233 people died in the country as a result of the seismic shocks, the tsunami and the fires.

Reference #1073:

Earthquake in 1703 in Jeddo, Japan, where 200,000 perished. [this is probably a description of the Dec 30, 1703, earthquake and tsunami]

Reference #1055:

December 30, 1703, Japan (Mushashi), Tokio: (Sagami), Odawara; (awa, Kazusa, Shimosa, Hitachi, Kotsuke, Shimotsuke, Mutsu), intensity III which corresponds to an earthquake which destroyed towns and devastated districts.

Reference #1068, #3761, #13913:

5,233 deaths

Reference #13909:

The total casualties is estimated to be at least 10,000.

Reference #13912 lists tsunamis hitting mainly along the coast of the Boso Peninsula and Sagami Bay, and it is estimated that more than 6,500 people were killed, especially on the Boso Peninsula. Overall, the earthquake motion and tsunami caused more than 10,000 deaths and other damage.

Sources NCEI cites

The publications NCEI lists for this record. The numbers match the “reference #” notes in its account above.

#1073 U.S. Congress (1888). Great Earthquakes, vol. 1, Washington, D.C. vol. 1, March 1888.
#150 Iida, Kumizi (1984). Catalog of tsunamis in Japan and its neighboring countries. Aichi Institute of Technology, Yachigusa, Yakusa-cho, Toyota-shi, 470-03, Japan, 52 p.
#1002 Lomnitz, Cinna (1974). Development in Geotectonics #5, Global Tectonics and Earthquake Risk, Elsevier Scientific Publishing Co., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 1974.
#1003 Bath, Markus (1973). Introduction to Seismology, Halsted Press, 1978.
#1055 Milne, John (1911). Catalogue of Destructive Earthquakes [7 to 1899 A.D.], Report of the 81st Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Portsmouth, London, United Kingdom, p. 649-740.
#1097 Imamura, Akitune (1930). Topographical Changes Accompanying Earthquake or Volcanic Eruptions. Publications of the Earthquake Investigation Committee in Foreign Languages, no. 35, Tokyo, p. 16-38.
#1068 Heck, N.H. (1944). Japanese Earthquakes. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, vol. 34, no. 3, July 1944, p. 117-136.
#79 Iida, Kumizi, Doak C. Cox, and George Pararas-Carayannis (1967). Preliminary Catalog of Tsunamis Occurring in the Pacific Ocean, HIG-67-10, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, 275 p. Bibliography to the Preliminary Catalog of Tsunamis Occurring in the Pacific Ocean, December 1967, 27 p.
#414 Soloviev, S.L., and Ch.N. Go (1974). A catalogue of tsunamis on the western shore of the Pacific Ocean [dates include 173-1968. Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Nauka Publishing House, Moscow, 439 p. [Canadian Translation of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences no. 5077, 1984, translation available from Canada Institute for Scientific and Technical Information, National Research Council, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1A OS2, 447 p.]
#13912 Earthquake Research Committee (2014). Long-term evaluation of seismicity along Sagami Trough (2nd version) (in Japanese), Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion, 83 pp. Link
#13913 Usami, Tatsuo (1979). Study of Historical Earthquakes in Japan. Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute, vol. 54, pp. 399-439.
#13909 Satake, K (2023). Recurrence and long‐term evaluation of Kanto earthquakes. Bulletin of the Seismological Society of America, 113(5), 1826-1841. DOI: 10.1785/0120230072
#3761 Usami, Tatsuo (1966). Descriptive table of major earthquakes in and near Japan which were accompanied by damages. Bulletin of the Earthquake Research Institute, Tokyo University, Supplementary vol. 44, p. 1571-1622. [in Japanese, table in back is a listing from a computer database]

Other significant earthquakes nearby

Within 200 km, the deadliest first.

Significant earthquakes of 1703 The 1700s Recent earthquakes near here This day in weather history

Sources

Significant earthquakes from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, Global Historical Hazard Database, cited as NCEI/WDS, doi:10.7289/V5PN93H7. Public domain. Read 2026-10-01. NCEI earthquake 1163.