Japanese Typhoon of September 21

Abstract

A TYPHOON that is reported in the daily Press to have passed across the south-western parts of Japan on September 21, and to have maintained its in tensity there for a whole day, with winds up to about 130 miles an hour, is said to have been the most destructive tropical storm of this type that has visited Japan since 1917. In the Times of September 26, it is stated that the Japanese Home Office on September 25 gave the casualties as 2,305 killed, 7,839 injured and 399 missing, with a total of more than 34,576 houses totally destroyed and more than ten times that number washed away, and some 3,000 ships damaged. Information about the meteorological aspects of the typhoon is scanty. The cyclone season in that neighbourhood virtually covers the whole year, although storms are very rare in February and March. As Japan lies altogether north of latitude 30°, a typhoon that reaches that country is approaching the stage when it becomes a cyclonic depression of temperate latitudes, and having ‘recurved’, is generally moving north or north-east. This would account perhaps for the south-west of Japan being affected, but the north east comparatively little. September is the month of greatest frequency of typhoons, and there is a rapid falling off in the last three months of the year. During the recent storm, trains were derailed, among which was the Tokyo-Shimonoseki express, which, with 250 passengers on board, left the rails while crossing a bridge, to be held fortunately by the parapet. There seem to have been the usual sea-waves, which penetrated far inland, and enough rain to cause serious flooding after the storm had abated. The track is said to have been from Nagasaki in the extreme south-west to the neighbourhood of Wakasa Bay, about four hundred miles to the north-east, Tokyo fortunately escaping with minor damage only.