The Mount Shindake volcano on Kuchinoerabu Island erupted on Thursday 17 January 2018, producing an ash column that rose to about 6 km above the island. The eruption occurred at about 9.20 am local time, and through hot rocks some way from the crater, causing about 80 of the islands 109 residents to seek temporary refuge in a shelter, though the risk was later judged to have passed and people returned to their homes. This is the latest in a series of eruptions on the volcano that began in October last year.
An ash cloud over Mount Shindake on 17 January 2019. Japan Meteorological Agency.
Japan has a complex tectonic environment with four plates underlying
parts of the Islands; the Pacific in the east and the Othorsk in the
North, there are the Philippine Plate to the south and the Eurasian Plate
to the West. All of these plates are moving in different directions,
and some subducting beneath the islands, leaning to a complex tectonic
situation where earthquakes and volcanoes are common.
The movement of the Pacific and Philippine Plates beneath eastern Honshu. Laurent Jolivet/Institut des Sciences de la Terre d'Orléans/Sciences de la Terre et de l'Environnement.
Kuchinoerabujima lies at the northeast end of the Ryukyu Island Arc,
which sits on top of the boundary between the Eurasian and Philippine
Plates. The Philippine Plate is being subducted beneath the Eurasian
Plate, in the Ryukyo Trench, to the Southeast of the Islands. As it is
drawn into the interior of the Earth, the tectonic plate is partially
melted by the heat of the Earth's interior, and liquid magma rises up
through the overlying Eurasian Plate to form the volcanoes of the Ryukyu
Islands and Kyūshū.
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