The season's 21st typhoon in the Pacific region, and a record 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 Wednesday.

Meari had shrunk to a temperate depression by noon (0300 GMT) Thursday and was out of Japan in the Pacific Ocean.

The storm bypassed the nation's capital, where blue skies returned, but weather forecasters warned that it was still threatening to cause damage to northern provinces with continued heavy rainfalls.

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 waters Wednesday as a river overflowed, police said.

Six others have also died in Ehime since Wednesday, according to local police.

Another seven were killed in the central Japan prefecture of Mie.

Of the seven, two bodies were recovered near wooden houses destroyed by a mudslide in a remote mountain area of Miyagawa village, 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 mudslide because the disaster hit the area so hard."

Television footage showed rescue workers and soldiers clearing the rubble and searching for the missing near piles of uprooted trees also caught in the mudslide.

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

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

Damage to rice and other crops in Japan caused by typhoons and heavy rain this summer is estimated to total at least 155 billion yen (1.4 billion dollars), the farm ministry said.