More than 50 people were reported missing Thursday as Japanese rescuers battled to reach hundreds still cut off from help three days after a devastating earthquake left at least 78 dead.
As the frantic search for survivors continues, more than a dozen communities remained isolated by landslides and blocked roads in central Japan, where the 7.5-magnitude quake struck on Monday.
The powerful main tremor, followed by hundreds of aftershocks, injured at least 330 people, local authorities said.
Authorities also published a list on Thursday of 51 people whose whereabouts could not be confirmed.
Further scenes of destruction were seen by AFP in the coastal town of Anamizu, including cars crushed under crumbling concrete and whole facades torn off three-storey structures.
Thousands of soldiers, firefighters and police officers from across Japan combed through the rubble of collapsed wooden houses and toppled commercial buildings for signs of life.
Around 29,000 households were without electricity in Ishikawa prefecture on the Sea of Japan coast, and more than 110,000 homes across Ishikawa and two neighbouring regions had no water.
In the city of Nanao, police managing traffic told drivers that one of the main roads leading to Wajima — where a huge fire razed a whole area of traditional wooden houses — had been prioritised for emergency vehicles.
Earthquakes have hit the Noto region with intensifying strength and frequency over the past five years.
The country is haunted by a massive 9.0-magnitude undersea quake in 2011, which triggered a tsunami that left around 18,500 people dead or missing.
It also swamped the Fukushima atomic plant, causing one of the worst nuclear disasters in history.
