A volcano has erupted on a small island in southern Japan, spewing black clouds of ash and rock into the sky and prompting authorities to tell residents to evacuate the island.
No injuries have been reported after Mount Shindake erupted at 10am on Friday.
The Japan Meteorological Agency raised the volcano alert level for Kuchinoerabu island, where Shindake is located, to five, the highest on its scale.
Shindake also erupted in August last year - the first time it had done so since 1980.
Nobuaki Hayashi, a local village chief, said about 120 of the island's 137 residents were gathered at a local evacuation facility.
"There was a really loud, 'dong' sound of an explosion, and then black smoke rose, darkening the sky," he told the national broadcaster NHK.
"It smelled of sulfur."
Hayashi said a few people on the island were still unaccounted for, and some had yet to reach the shelter as they had to travel by boat.
"The skies here are blue, but smoke is still rising to the west," he said.
A military helicopter has been sent to survey the island and assess damage, while the Coast Guard has also dispatched a ship to help evacuate the residents.
Kuchinoerabu is a national park, with tourism and fishing the main activities on the heavily forested and mountainous island.
Kuchinoerabu can be reached only by a once-a-day ferry from Yakushima island, 12 kilometres to the east, which has an airport and a population of more than 13,000 people.
Japan, which sits atop the Pacific "Ring of Fire," has dozens of volcanoes and is frequently jolted by earthquakes.
Authorities recently closed part of a popular hot springs about 80 kilometres from Tokyo because of fears Mount Hakone, which sits to the southeast of Mount Fuji, might erupt.
The eruption last September of another volcano, Mount Ontake in central Japan, killed 57 people.
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