The season's 21st typhoon in the Pacific region, and the eighth to directly hit Japan, has wreaked havoc in southern and western regions of the country since landing on the main southern island of Kyushu on Wednesday.

It was now threatening to cause damage to northern provinces, bypassing the nation's capital.

The storm had weakened slightly to pack wind speeds of 82.8 kilometersmiles) per hour by Thursday morning, but the Meteorological Agency warned it could still bring about heavy rainfalls that can trigger mudslides and flooding.

In Niihama City, Ehime prefecture, some 700 kilometres (430 miles) southwest of Tokyo, a 47-year-old woman and her 18-year-old daughter were found dead early Thursday after a mudslide washed away their home.

Two neighbours who tried to rescue them were also killed, according to local police.

In Saijo, Ehime prefecture, the body of a 71-year-old woman was found after she was swept away from her house by flood water Wednesday as a river overflowed, police said.

Four others have also died in Ehime since Wednesday while another four were killed in the central Japan prefecture of Mie.

Of the four in Mie, two bodies were recovered near wooden houses destroyed by a mudslide in a remote mountain area of Miyagawa Village, a local police said.

"Several houses were destroyed by the mudslide in Miyagawa village," a Mie prefecture police spokesman said. "We cannot even tell whether the victims were inside or outside of their homes at the time of the mud slide because the disaster hit the area so hard."

Television footage showed rescue workers searching for the missing near piles of uprooted trees also caught in the mudslide which destroyed the homes.

Police also blamed the storms for the death of a 70-year-old man found in a water-purification tank on his food factory in Kagoshima city on Kyushu.

The National Police Agency said one person died in Okinawa, southern Japan, while seven people were missing in Mie and four others were unaccounted for in Ehime.

On Thursday the typhoon was near the port city of Kesennuma, 400 kilometres (250 miles) north of Tokyo, moving east toward the Pacific Ocean at a speed of 35 kilometres per hour.

It is expected to dissipate into a temperate depression around early Thursday afternoon, the meteorological agency said.

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