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But there were no deaths reported in the earthquakes, which were centered in Miyagi prefecture, about 190 miles north of Tokyo.

The first temblor, measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale, hit shortly after midnight. It was followed by a second measuring 6.2 about seven hours later. Aftershocks rattled the area, including one on Saturday afternoon with a magnitude of 5.4.

NHK public television said 421 people had been injured and about 2,500 evacuated. Most of the injuries were not serious.

"We hope that the earthquakes are settling down, but we are worried about further damage because of the heavy rain," Yoshitada Konoike, cabinet minister for disaster management, told a news conference in Tokyo.

The quake affected a wide swathe of northeast Japan, a mostly rural area with a few large cities and some high-tech firms.

Two people buried in a landslide were rescued, but officials said the heavy rains posed the danger of more landslides.

About 130,000 homes temporarily lost electric power. Train services in the area were halted and some highways were closed. By evening, about 12,000 homes were still without water.

Army personnel were dispatched to the region to help out.

There were no reports of damage at the Onagawa nuclear power plant in Miyagi or at nuclear plants in nearby Fukushima prefecture, also shaken by the quake.

"We were eating breakfast when it hit and tried to hide under the table," said Ryuichi Matsuoka, 39, who was evacuated along with six family members to a school gym in the town of Nangocho.

"We got worried, so we came here," Matsuoka said. About 530 people were evacuated to the gym and another spot in the town.

Television footage showed collapsed wooden houses amid scattered ceramic roof tiles in several towns and villages.

Concrete walls around the yards of other houses lay crumbled and gravestones had fallen over.

A quake estimated at 7.0 on the Richter scale struck Miyagi on May 26, injuring more than 100, but damage was limited since the epicenter was 44 miles deep. Saturday's earthquakes were much shallower, with epicenters between 10 to 12 km deep.

A meteorological agency official said there were no links between the Saturday earthquakes and the so-called Miyagi-oki earthquake (news - web sites), which has hit the region cyclically about every 30 to 40 years and last struck in 1978, killing 28 people.

"It is unlikely that there is any connection," he said.

The May 26 quake was about the same magnitude as a deadly earthquake in the western Japanese city of Kobe eight years ago, which measured 7.2 on the Richter scale and left 6,430 dead.

Japan sits on the junction of at least three tectonic plates, slabs on the earth's surface whose movements cause earthquakes.

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