At least eight people were killed in southern Japan on Tuesday as the powerful Typhoon Songda left a trail of destruction in its wake after making landfall early in the day.
News channel NHK estimated that at least 580 people had been injured in the storm, with up to 100 buildings totally destroyed.
More than a million households have been left without electricity and up to 60 000 people have been advised to evacuate their homes.
The storm has also wreaked havoc in South Korea, with two taxi passengers severely wounded by a falling tree in the port city of Busan and thousands of ships seeking shelter in the peninsula’s harbours.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency in Hiroshima said it measured wind speeds of 60,2 metres per second (about 216kph) on Tuesday afternoon, the strongest recorded since the office began keeping statistics in 1937.
Songda — named after a river in Vietnam — is the seventh typhoon to land on Japan this year, a record number for a calendar year.
The storm landed near Nagasaki prefecture, about 1 000km south-west of Tokyo, at about 9.30am local time, travelling north-east at 40kph, the agency said.
Transportation in the area was severely disrupted, with more than 400 domestic and international flights cancelled.
About 22 crew members from an Indonesian ship remain missing after their ship was believed ran aground in the stormy Seton Inland Sea during the height of the typhoon, according to Japanese coast-guard officials.
A spokesperson for the coast-guard office in Yamaguchi prefecture said a crewman of the 6 315-ton Tri Ardhiant made radio contact at about 10.10am, seeking help.
Coast-guard officials have been unable to locate the stricken vessel due to the bad weather. Three bodies washed ashore are widely believed to be those of crew members, although no official confirmation was available.
A Cambodian-registered ship also sank after docking at a port in Hatsukaichi in Hiroshima prefecture on Tuesday, according to local police. Two of the ship’s 18 Russian crew members are confirmed to have been killed. Two more remain missing — 14 were rescued.
The typhoon caused some buildings to collapse at Hiroshima’s famous Itsukushima Shrine, which is registered as a Unesco World Cultural Heritage site, according to shrine officials.
Many factories and manufacturing plants in the region have been forced to temporarily halt production. In the port city of Kobe and in other sea-level towns, coastal roads and streets have been flooded. — Sapa-DPA