A POWERFUL typhoon has made landfall in disaster-ravaged Japan, with at least four people already dead, AFP reports.
“The typhoon landed at around 2pm local time,” near Hamamatsu in Shizuoka prefecture, a meteorological agency official said.
More than a million people were initially warned to leave their homes over fears that the torrential rains Typhoon Roke is expected to bring will cause widespread flooding.
Four people have been found dead in central and western Japan, while two people are missing in the central prefecture of Gifu, including a young boy who disappeared on his way home from primary school.
Many evacuation advisories were dropped by lunchtime today, but remained in force for about 330,000 people nationwide.
Heavy downpours caused flash flooding and massive landslides that swept away buildings and people.
By lunchtime, Typhoon Roke was 120 km south-west of Hamamatsu in Shizuoka prefecture, packing winds of up to 162 km per hour near its centre. It was moving at about 35 km per hour.
It was expected to move north-east, possibly towards the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant, where workers are still battling to control persistent radiation leaks.
“The typhoon will move north at high speed,” a Japan Meteorological Agency official told a news conference, warning of damage and impact on transport systems.
The typhoon has already brought torrential rain and some flooding, with TV footage showing residents walking through streets knee-deep in water.
A number of expressways have been closed, while more than 200 flights are to be cancelled, according to NHK.
Media reports said a 66-year-old man in Nagoya fell to his death while unblocking a drainpipe and a 71-year-old man in Karatsu city in southern Japan drowned in high ocean waves while trying to moor a fishing boat.
Auto giant Toyota said it was temporarily shutting 11 of its 15 Japanese plants, which lie in the path of the approaching storm.
“The second (afternoon) shift is stopped. (It is) not resuming today. No decision has been made for tomorrow,” company spokesman Dion Corbert said on Wednesday.
The affected plants are all in Aichi prefecture in central Japan.
Roke is expected to heap more misery on a country that has suffered badly at the hands of nature this year.
The huge quake and tsunami of March 11 left 20,000 people dead or missing and devastated hundreds of kilometres of coastline, destroying whole communities and wreaking billions of dollars of damage.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant was sent into meltdown after its cooling systems were swamped by the waves, sending radiation into the air, sea and food chain in the planet’s worst atomic disaster since Chernobyl.
Earlier this month, Typhoon Talas slammed into central Japan, killing about 100 people in the deadliest storm to hit the country for over 30 years.