At least 17 people have died as a powerful typhoon lashed Japan's Pacific coast, with the death toll likely to rise.
Typhoon Wipha, dubbed the strongest in a decade, on Wednesday caused landslides that buried houses as it churned past an island just south of Tokyo.
Public broadcaster NHK and Jiji Press reported at least 16 people had died and 51 were unaccounted for on Oshima, after houses were destroyed or swept away by a series of landslides and floods on the island, 120 kilometres south of the Japanese capital.
"We've confirmed that 13 people have died, and the number is likely to increase later," a police official in Oshima earlier told AFP.
A woman was confirmed dead in western Tokyo after her body was recovered from a river.
Many of the bodies of those who died on Oshima were found in houses that had been splintered by huge volumes of earth sent crashing down mountainsides by torrential rains and strong winds.
Video from the island showed ruined wooden houses half buried in mud. Mangled trees and other debris were piled up around them.
The storm dumped more than 12 centimetres of rain on Oshima in an hour, according to the meteorological agency.
Many local residents had sought shelter in evacuation centres, reporting dirty water had been gushing into their homes, according to local media.
Emergency workers had rescued two people who were trapped inside a destroyed house by around 8am (1000 AEDT), NHK said, adding police and firefighters were having difficulty getting to some stricken areas.
The local authority has not been able to confirm the whereabouts of 51 of the island's more than 8300 residents, Jiji Press reported.
Tokyo Metropolitan Police said earlier it was dispatching about 50 special police officers to the island as reinforcements, Jiji Press said.
Japanese troops have also sent three helicopters and several servicemen to Oshima to help with the rescue effort at the request of the Tokyo Metropolitan government, a defence ministry spokesman said.
In western Tokyo, a woman who appeared to be in her 40s was confirmed dead at a hospital after she was discovered in a river, taking the total death toll to 17, police and reports said.
A further three people were missing in the greater Tokyo area, officials and reports said.
Further north, the operator of the battered Fukushima nuclear plant said it had released some rainwater that was trapped inside its barrages, but added that its radiation reading was within safety limits.
It reported no ill effects on the power station, where thousands of tonnes of radiation-polluted water are being stored in tanks after being used to cool reactors.
More than 400 flights to and from Tokyo have been cancelled, most of them domestic, according to major Japanese carriers All Nippon Airways and Japan Airlines.
Typhoon Wipha, which had not made landfall, brought heavy rains and strong winds to Tokyo's metropolitan area, heavily disrupting the morning commute for hundreds of thousands of people.
At 1700 AEDT, it was located in the Pacific, east of the northeastern region, and had become an extratropical cyclone, according to the Japan Meteorological Agency.
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