With a recorded death toll of five, Typhoon Shanshan steadily made its way across the Japanese archipelago on Friday, dropping torrential rains and causing transportation chaos.
One of the fiercest typhoons to hit Japan in decades, the storm had subsided by early am, although gusts of up to 126 miles per hour were still being recorded.
Three members of the same family were killed in a landslide that occurred late Tuesday in Aichi prefecture, some 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) away, even before it made landfall on the island of Kyushu due to the torrential rains that preceded it.
Two more people were reported to have died including a man last seen on a small boat in Kyushu and another whose two-storey home partially collapsed in Tokushima prefecture on the neighbouring island of Shikoku.
As the typhoon struck Kyushu on Thursday with gusts reaching 252 kph, it destroyed windows and tore roof tiles, injuring at least 81 more people, many of whom were struck by shattered glass.
It was unknown how many of the more than five million people who were warned to evacuate took heed of the authorities’ highest notice, which was issued in many places.
Authorities issued an order for inhabitants in the remote town of Ninomiya, which is close to Tokyo, to take “immediate measures” to ensure their safety, such as evacuating to higher floors after a nearby river overflowed.
Some parts of Kyushu saw record rains for August, with the town of Misato recording a staggering 791.5 millimetres (31 inches) in 48 hours, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
More than 250,000 homes in Kyushu had power outages, but the utility operator reported on Friday that only 6,500 remained without power while engineers fixed damaged transmission lines.
According to media sources, several motorways in Kyushu and other nearby areas were closed entirely or in part last night.
Operators warned of possible problems elsewhere as Shinkansen bullet trains were stopped on the main line between Tokyo and Osaka and remained paused in Kyushu.
After canceling about 50,000 flights the day before, Japan Airlines and ANA had already announced the cancelation of around 600 flights between them for Friday.
Auto giant Toyota suspended production at all 14 of its factories in Japan.
Nissan and Honda also halted operations at their Kyushu plants, as did chipmakers including Tokyo Electron, reports said.
Shanshan follows Typhoon Ampil, which this month generated severe rains that caused hundreds of planes and trains to be delayed, but only little damage and injuries.
Climate change has caused typhoons in the region to form closer to coastlines, intensify more quickly, and last longer over land, according to a study published last month.
Another, made public by World Weather Attribution (WWA) on Thursday, said that Typhoon Gaemi, which struck and killed scores of people this year in the Philippines, Taiwan, and China, was fueled by climate change.
