Japan Ground Self-Defense Force soldiers conduct search and rescue operations for a missing guest at a destroyed mountain villa following a landslide site caused by an earthquake in Minamiaso town, Kumamoto prefecture, southern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo April 18, 2016. [Photo/Agencies]

Rescuers digging with their bare hands dragged some elderly survivors, still in pyjamas, out of the rubble and onto makeshift stretchers made of tatami mats.

"We can't take a bath, we don't have any clothes to change into - we just have what we ran out in - and it's taking a long time for goods to get here," a woman at one evacuation centre told TBS television.

Public broadcaster NHK showed footage of forests and rice fields torn apart by the quake, saying one 50 km (31 miles) strip shifted almost 2 metres (6 feet) sideways.

Quakes are common in Japan, part of the seismically active "Ring of Fire" which sweeps from the South Pacific islands, up through Indonesia, Japan, across to Alaska and down the west coast of North, Central and South America.

At the other end of the ring this weekend, Ecuador's biggest earthquake in decades killed at least 262 people, caused devastation in coastal towns and left an unknown number trapped in ruins.

A massive 9 magnitude quake and tsunami in northern Japan in March 2011 caused the worst nuclear crisis since Chernobyl in 1986, shutting down the nuclear industry for safety checks and sending radiation spewing across the countryside.

Nearly 20,000 people were killed in the 2011 tsunami.