Police officials said at least five people died, 11 were missing and 77 were injured by the typhoon, which veered out to the Pacific off the northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Etau left Japan at around 6:00 am (2100 GMT Saturday) and was downgraded to a temperate depression, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The typhoon brought heavy rain and strong wind across Japan, causing serious flooding and landslides, police said.

Police discovered the body of the latest fatality early Sunday while assisting a man whose truck was swept off a bridge and into a river in Kamishihoro town, Hokkaido by flooding.

As rescuers helped the driver, who received only minor injuries, they found a van in the river with the body of woman trapped inside, police said.

"We are now trying to identify the individual. But the process has been delayed because floods and landslides have blocked roads to Sapporo," Hokkaido's capital where the woman was believed to have lived, the official said.

According to the National Police Agency, four others died elsewhere in the nation because of the typhoon.

On Saturday, a 45-year-old truck driver was blown off a highway bridge by strong winds into the sea and drowned in Osaka in western Japan. He was trying to adjust his cargo at the time.

A 63-year-old farmer drowned Friday after falling into a swollen river near his rice paddy in Okayama, also in western Japan.

A woman in Mie, a prefecture on the Pacific side of Japan's main Honshu island, died after strong winds blew her off a terrace into a garden at her home. The 77-year-old hit her head against a concrete block.

And the body of a 71-year-old man was found Friday in a swollen river in Kochi on Shikoku in southern Japan. He apparently slipped into the river from the steps to his boat.

TERRA.WIRE