Japan: Four dead as Typhoon Dujuan lashes Tokyo and surrounding areas

Four people have died in Japan after Typhoon Dujuan battered Tokyo and surrounding prefectures with torrential rains and destructive winds, local reports said.

At the height of the storm on Monday, authorities warned of an "imminent threat to life" and urged 1.9 million people to move to shelters.

Authorities had advised the public to pay attention to weather information.

Concerts scheduled for Monday at the Rock in Japan music festival were cancelled, while the Tokyo Game Show, a video game convention, also cancelled Monday's programme.

"With a sense of urgency, I instructed Chief Cabinet Secretary Takehara and Minister Hosono to respond with utmost preparedness," she wrote, before saying she had boarded a flight to the US.

The Yokosuka City Fire Department told the BBC that a woman in Kanagawa prefecture, aged in her 60s, was believed to have been buried alive after a landslide swept the house she lived in.

Separately, Sodegaura City Fire Department in Chiba prefecture told the BBC a man in his 50s was rescued after getting trapped while working to clear debris at a landslide site.

Some research suggests that Japan has become more exposed to destructive storms, but climate change is not thought to be increasing the number of these storms globally, and could even make them less common in some regions.

Warmer ocean waters mean storms can pick up more energy, leading to higher wind speeds.

This year, El Niño - the natural weather phenomenon bringing warmer water to parts of the tropical Pacific - is another factor.

Some El Niño events may expose Japan to stronger typhoons, for example.

Additional reporting by Chie Kobayashi and Mark Poynting, climate reporter