I find it kinda weird that you can have a pretty shallow 8.7 monster-quake - close to inhabited land - but no apparent fatalities.

It is Russia, so who knows. I guess it is not densely populated, similar to Alaska. It's multiple story buildings that kill. If it was in a major city there'd be over 100k dead.

I wonder what implications, if any, this has for the Nankai trough.