The clock, which hanged in Japanese high priest Bunshun Sakano’s temple and is thought to be about 100 years old, stopped ticking after the country was struck by an earthquake and tsunami that killed more than 18,000 people on 11 March 2011.

Then late on 13 February this year – just weeks before the 10th anniversary of the disaster – the same region was struck by another powerful earthquake, described by seismologists as an aftershock of the March 2011 quake.

The following morning Sakano, the Buddhist temple’s head priest, went to check the main hall for any damage when he heard a ticking sound. The clock, which had remained silent even after being repeatedly cleaned, was moving again. Two months later, it is still ticking, The Guardian reports.

The clock, which Sakano had bought at an antique shop in neighbouring Fukushima prefecture several years before the 2011 disaster, appears to have been shaken back into action by the force of February’s earthquake.

A representative of Seiko, the clock’s manufacturer, told the Mainichi: “It’s possible that the pendulum, which had stopped, started moving again with the shaking of the earthquake, or that dust that had built up inside came loose.”