A court on Tuesday ruled that a kindergarten in Miyagi prefecture and its headmaster were culpable in the deaths of four children who were killed by an earthquake- triggered tsunami in March 2011.

The Sendai District court ordered the private Hiyori kindergarten in Ishinomaki City to pay damages of 177 million yen (about 1.7 million US dollars) to the families of four of the children who died after their school bus was engulfed by a killer tsunami on March 11, 2011, local media reported.

The ruling by the court marks the first time in Japan a civil lawsuit has been accepted by a court in favor of plaintiffs who have filed suits against schools, companies and institutions with managerial responsibilities.

The defendants argued that it was impossible to predict a tsunami of such ferocity would hit the coastal area, despite tsunami warnings to the contrary following the area being rocked by a colossal earthquake, the reports stated.

Presiding Judge Norio Saiki on Tuesday maintained the kindergarten "could have easily predicted that a massive tsunami would arrive in the area after a quake registering lower 6 on the Japanese seismic scale of 7 continued for three minutes," local media said.

Saiki added that those in charge at the kindergarten "should have concretely foreseen a natural disaster and protected pupils whose abilities to predict the danger were underdeveloped."

The judge added that the principal had failed to implement the kindergarten's disaster protocols, which in this instance called for all the children in the school to be keep on the premises in the event of a major earthquake until their parents picked them up.

"It was a landmark ruling. The judiciary indicated the direction of anti-disaster measures to be taken by educational institutions," said one of the plaintiffs who lost his 6-year old daughter.