Shinkansen services suspended, 300 flights cancelled as Tropical Storm Mawar passes Japan

People riding bicycles in the heavy rain in Kochi, Japan, on June 2. PHOTO: REUTERS

TOKYO – Parts of Japan were slammed by torrential rain on Friday as Tropical Storm Mawar neared.

The authorities advised more than a million people to evacuate, many flights and other transport were cancelled, and power blackouts were reported in thousands of homes.

One person was seriously injured and seven people had minor injuries in the southern prefecture of Okinawa, as at early Friday afternoon, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency.

Nearly 1.3 million people across the country were advised to evacuate, the agency said, with the largest number in areas of western Honshu such as Wakayama prefecture. 

Just over 300 flights were cancelled as at noon on Friday, along with 52 ferry services, the Transport Ministry said. 

Shinkansen bullet train service was halted from Tokyo to Osaka, western Japan, as well as some other parts of the nation, public broadcaster NHK reported. 

About 8,900 households were hit by power blackouts, the report said. 

Toyota Motor said it was suspending work at its two factories in Aichi prefecture, central Japan, for Friday night to ensure employees were safe.

Television footage showed several rivers close to the top of their banks by mid-afternoon, and there was a report of flooding in Shizuoka prefecture in the evening.

Western Wakayama region saw several rivers burst their banks, and NHK footage showed a brown-coloured river in a Wakayama town covering railway tracks. 

“We urge residents (in the affected areas) to be extremely vigilant against landslides, flooding and rising and overflowing rivers,” top government spokesman Hirokazu Matsuno told reporters. 

“Extremely heavy rainfall with thunderstorms are expected over a wide area from western to eastern Japan over the next three days” due to the storm, he said.

Mawar wreaked havoc on the Pacific island of Guam earlier this week, uprooting trees and leaving tens of thousands of homes temporarily without power.

The typhoon has since weakened to tropical storm strength from its earlier super typhoon status.

The main body of the storm is expected to pass south of the main island of Honshu as it moves into the Pacific.

But forecasters said humid air from the storm could feed into a seasonal rain front, touching off heavy localised rains.

The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) earlier issued flood warnings for the Okinawa island chain and parts of Shikoku and Honshu islands, with forecasts of 350mm of rain in parts of western Honshu in the 24 hours up to Saturday morning.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said people living in areas where heavy rainfall was expected should pay attention to evacuation notices and the latest weather information.

Similar weather patterns have caused flooding and landslides in the past, most notably in the summer of 2018, when more than 200 were killed in western Japan. 

“What happened five years ago is still as clear as yesterday,” one woman in the smallest main island of Shikoku told NHK, explaining why she had evacuated. 

Though heavy summer rains are not uncommon in Japan, June is unusually early for a typhoon-type storm.  

Scientists say climate change is intensifying the risk of heavy rain in Japan and elsewhere, because a warmer atmosphere holds more water.

On Thursday, the JMA said the nation had experienced its warmest spring since record-keeping began in 1898. REUTERS, AFP

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