Scientists would later identify the shaking pattern as a phenomenon they called the "killer pulse" -- seismic waves oscillating at a frequency of one to two seconds, the same lethal rhythm that had toppled buildings in the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake and the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California. This particular frequency devastates two-story structures, and as the pulse waves traveled outward from the epicenter at a depth of just 11 kilometers, they amplified as they reached the softer alluvial plains near the coast. In Wajima, the shaking reached a peak ground acceleration of 1,304 centimeters per second squared -- 1.33 times the force of gravity. People across Honshu felt the tremor: from Oshamanbe in Hokkaido to the north, Hiroshima to the west, and Nahari on the southern coast of Shikoku.

One death came from the earthquake. In Wajima, a 52-year-old woman was struck by a collapsing toro -- a traditional Japanese stone lantern -- the heavy granite crushing her beneath an ornament that had likely stood in quiet beauty for decades. At least 356 other people were injured across the peninsula. The damage spread in concentric rings: 22 cracks split the runway at Noto Airport, though crews repaired it by the following day. Sections of the Noto Toll Road collapsed, stranding motorists who abandoned their vehicles and fled on foot; full repairs took until November. An estimated 110,000 homes lost power. Some 13,250 had no water. Soil liquefaction buckled the coastline near the epicenter and the port of Himi. At least 1,000 people in Wajima were evacuated to temporary shelters as aftershocks rippled through the peninsula.

Japan's disaster response machinery engaged within minutes. Four minutes after the quake, an emergency meeting convened at the Prime Minister's Official Residence in Tokyo. By 10:45, Ishikawa Prefecture had launched its own emergency session, summoning 375 firefighters from seven prefectures stretching from Toyama to Tokyo to Hyogo. Governor Masanori Tanimoto called in 30 soldiers from the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force, with helicopters scrambled from bases in Wajima and Komatsu. Ground, maritime, and air forces all converged on the Noto Peninsula to assess damage. Government inspection teams under Kensei Mizote were dispatched to the epicenter area, arriving the same day. The response was textbook -- swift, coordinated, and scaled to the disaster.

More than 500 perceptible aftershocks followed the mainshock, keeping residents on edge for weeks. The 25 track ballasts displaced on the Noto Line were a reminder that the peninsula's infrastructure remained fragile. But perhaps the most telling consequence arrived six months later, not as a tremor but as a whisper. Among teenagers in Toyama Prefecture -- the generation that had grown up believing their home was immune to earthquakes -- a rumor began circulating that a massive quake was coming for Toyama. The fear was irrational but understandable: a century of geological quiet had been their inheritance, and now it felt like a debt coming due. The Noto Peninsula would shake again, in 2023 and then catastrophically on New Year's Day 2024, proving that the teenagers' anxiety, if not their specific prediction, was justified.