By Tim Kelly and Irene Wang
FUKUOKA/YUFU, Japan (Reuters) – Typhoon Shanshan brought heavy rain to Japan on Friday, causing flooding and landslides hundreds of miles away from its center. Travel services were disrupted, and major factories were forced to shut down.
According to the disaster management agency, at least four people have died and 99 have been injured in storm-related incidents in recent days.
In Kyushu, where the typhoon made landfall on Thursday, residents were assessing the damage after a night of intense rain and strong winds.
Yu Fukuda, who owns a fish farm and restaurant in Yufu, Oita prefecture, arrived to find floodwaters reaching one meter high inside the building. “There were marks of mud and dirt everywhere, showing how high the water had risen. It’s heartbreaking,” she told Reuters as her team cleaned up the debris.
With gusts of up to 180 km per hour, the typhoon was near Matsuyama in Ehime Prefecture and moving eastward. Power outages affected around 250,000 households in seven prefectures in Kyushu on Thursday.
Evacuation advisories have been issued to over 3.3 million people nationwide, with concerns about landslides and overflowing rivers due to heavy rain.
Shizuoka has experienced record-breaking rainfall, with over 500 millimeters in the last 72 hours. Toyota, Nissan, Honda, Renesas, Tokyo Electron, and Sony have suspended production at some facilities due to the storm.
Airlines like ANA Holdings and Japan Airlines have canceled numerous flights, while ferry and rail services, including the bullet train, were suspended. Tourists like Lin Yue-Hua from Taiwan faced challenges getting home due to transportation disruptions.
Typhoon Shanshan is the latest severe weather event to hit Japan, following Typhoon Ampil earlier this month.
