TOKYO, Sept 29 (AFP) - Powerful Typhoon Meari pounded Japan with heavy rain and strong winds on Wednesday, leaving at least two people dead and seven missing, weather officials and police said.
Twenty-six people were injured in the southern regions of Kyushu and Okinawa while mudslides and flooding forced tens of thousands to leave their homes, local police said.
Television footage showed broken banks of swollen rivers and cars churning in flooded roads. The typhoon triggered at least three major landslides in Mie prefecture, western Japan, while troops were deployed to rescue people.
The season's 21st typhoon in the Pacific region, and the eighth to directly hit Japan, landed on Kyushu early on Wednesday.
Packing wind speeds of 108 kilometers (67 miles) per hour, the typhoon was over the Shikoku region as of 7:30 pm (1030 GMT), about 600 kilometers southwest of Tokyo, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.
The storm forced airlines to cancel more than 200 domestic flights linking the south and west to the rest of the country, the public television network Japan Broadcasting Corp. (NHK) said.
A total of 230 millimeters (9.2 inches) of rain hit Kyushu in the 24 hours to 9:00 am Wednesday.
The rainfall was even harder further to the east, with the typhoon dumping 540 millimeters of rain in the same period in Mie prefecture.
More than 180,000 people were recommended to evacuate, according to NHK.
"Two people, including a 71-year-old man, were found dead and seven others are missing in typhoon-related accidents," a Mie police spokesman said.
A 70-year-old man was found dead in a water-purification tank in the premises of his food company factory in Kyushu's Kagoshima City, police said.
"He may have slipped into the tank after being hit by a gust of wind although we have not determined whether his death was definitely caused by the typhoon," a police official said.
The typhoon was moving northeast at a speed of 40 kilometers per hour and was expected to hit Gunma, 100 kilometers north of Tokyo, by early Thursday.