11 killed as typhoon pounds Japan

Typhoon Tokage, which also left eight people missing, became a record 10th typhoon to land on the main Japanese islands in the past year. The storms have claimed at least 113 lives.

Nearly 500 domestic flights were cancelled, affecting 44,000 passengers, and tens of thousands of homes lost electricity as the typhoon raced northeast at 50 kilometers (30 miles) an hour, with Tokyo in its sights overnight.

The downpour was heavy enough for the Central Japan Railway Co. to cancel the bullet train between Tokyo and Osaka.

With an 800-kilometer radius of powerful winds, Tokage is the biggest typhoon to land in Japan since the Meteorological Agency began its classification system in 1991.

A police statement said 11 people were killed and 62 injured across Japan.

The typhoon hit land 700 kilometers southwest of Tokyo in Kochi prefecture, where a 20-meter (22-yard) high dike gave way at Muroto due to high waves, destroying several houses.

"At least three bodies were found in the area. There might be more," a local police official said.

Among the other eight killed, a 31-year-old man was found dead near a flooded river in Miyazaki prefecture after his vehicle skidded at a bridge, police said.

In southwestern Ehime prefecture, a 24-year-old woman died after being buried by a landslide. Also in Ehime, two elderly men and a woman went missing after separate landslides destroyed their houses.

Other people who went missing included a 75-year-old fishermen pulled into the ocean as he inspected his boat in Kochi, a 63-year-old farmer swept away in a ricefield in Miyazaki and a newspaper deliveryman who disappeared in Oita prefecture.

In Chiba prefecture just east of Tokyo, two workers building an embankment along a coastline were pulled into the Pacific by high waves, a government official said.

Packing wind speeds of 144 kilometers per hour, Typhoon Tokage triggered landslides and sent objects flying.

Among the injured were four people trapped in an office building which was crushed in Oita, a 68-year-old man in Saga Prefecture who fell from his roof while fixing it and an 83-year-old woman who fell and broke her thigh.