Nearly 900 domestic airline flights were cancelled and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi called off campaign stops in western Japan before Sunday's election.

Nabi, packing winds of up to 126 kilometers (78 miles) per hour, headed into the Sea of Japan (East Sea) late Tuesday as it swept over the southern island of Kyushu in a matter of hours, the Meteorological Agency said.

Moving north at just 25 kilometers per hour, the typhoon has swamped the archipelago with as much as 1,300 millimeters (52 inches) of rain since Sunday afternoon.

The typhoon was weaker than Hurricane Katrina but it brought violent winds of 90 kilometers an hour or more across a radius of nearly 300 kilometers, wider than the 220 kilometers Katrina covered at its peak.

It left at least five people dead and 15 missing in southern Japan, mostly in landslides, the National Police Agency said, adding that 53 others were injured. A man was killed earlier in the Tokyo area.

In Tokushima on the island of Shikoku, a 72-year-old man drowned when a gust swept him into a canal while riding a bicycle, police said.

"Since this typhoon is bringing strong winds to a wide area, we should be all the more careful about damage," a weather official said.

With images of Katrina's destruction on the US Gulf Coast still prominent in the news, disaster-prone Japan ordered more than 100,000 people to evacuate their homes in Kyushu.

"We have been seeing torrential rain and the slow speed of the typhoon is making things worse. We have ordered cities and towns to be on high alert," said an official at the Kagoshima prefectural government in Kyushu.

Four people went missing as landslides crushed their homes in Kagoshima. A mother in her 40s and her 10-year-old son were also slightly injured in the province when their windows were broken by strong winds.

"Police, the Self-Defense Forces (military) and firefighters are heading toward the scene but haven't arrived there yet," another prefectural government official said.

A total of 894 flights to and from southern Japan were cancelled Tuesday, according to public broadcaster NHK.

The typhoon has also brought heavy rain to other parts of the nation. A 61-year-old man was found dead Sunday on a flooded road in Saitama outside Tokyo after he rushed to help his son whose car was stuck.

Typhoon Mawar hit Japan last month, bringing heavy rains and fierce winds that left at least one person dead and injured four others.

The mainland was struck by a record 10 typhoons last year. One of them, Tokage, was the deadliest in a quarter-century, killing 90 people.

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