Four people were also missing in South Korea.

Television pictures showed rescue workers and military personnel hunting for survivors in wrecked houses in southwestern Japan and people clearing mud out of houses, schools and other buildings.

Police said at least 52 houses were destroyed or badly damaged and about 6,000 houses were flooded. Tens of thousands of people remained in evacuation centres, NHK said.

At the height of the storm, more than 250,000 people fled their homes in southwestern Japan, the Yomiuri newspaper said.

About 100,000 households in the region were without electricity on Wednesday, NHK said.

"Although there are some low-lying areas that are still flooded, a lot of the water has gone down already," said an official in Kyushu's Miyazaki prefecture, where several towns were particularly hard hit.

Nearly 300 people spent the night on a train in Osaka, Japan's second-largest city, after being stranded when the storm halted rail services, Kyodo news agency said. Flights were disrupted on Wednesday, with more than 100 cancelled, NHK said, but train services had resumed after being halted on Tuesday.

Japan's Meteorological Agency said Nabi, whose name means "butterfly" in Korean, was moving northeast over the Sea of Japan and would skim Japan's west coast before hitting the northernmost main island of Hokkaido on Thursday.

The agency warned of heavy rains, high winds and possible flooding and landslides across northern Japan.

Oil refiners, meanwhile, were restoring operations after disruption from the storm.

Top refiner Nippon Oil Corp said it had resumed oil shipments by road and sea to its Marifu refinery on the southern tip of the main island of Honshu, and Kyushu Oil Co. said it had restarted shipments and its refinery in Oita, Kyushu, would return to normal operations later on Wednesday.

In South Korea, which escaped the brunt of the typhoon, several hundred were evacuated after heavy rains and winds battered southern and eastern parts of the country.

The storm dumped about 620 mm (24 inches) of rain in the southeastern industrial city of Ulsan, causing landslides across roads and railway tracks and snarling transport.

Four thousand households were without electricity.

The country's two main airlines -- Korean Air and Asiana -- cancelled over 100 flights.