Typhoon Tokage, which raced up the archipelago Wednesday, killed 48 people and left 33 missing, according to public broadcaster NHK.

Rescuers in boats navigated among the flooded houses looking for the missing, as trains that were parked lay overturned from the fierce winds and houses lay in rubble from landslides.

Tokage injured more than 230 people and flooded some 1,000 households, an official for the National Police Agency told AFP. Forty houses were destroyed or damaged and there were 256 landslides, police said.

Some 37 people, most of them in their mid-60s, were plucked by a helicopter and rafts from the top of a tourist bus overnight after being stranded in Maizuru, some 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of Tokyo.

"We were standing on the roof of the bus and I was shaking as the water level went up to my knees. My knees still hurt," one male passenger told NHK.

Sixteen other residents in Maizuru were also rescued by helicopters and boats from Japan's armed forces, Jiji Press said.

Tokage, which means lizard in Japanese, was the deadliest typhoon to strike Japan since 1991 when 62 people were killed.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi directed the minister in charge of disaster management, Yoshitaka Murata, to visit the areas worst hit by the typhoon.

"There was really terrible damage. I want you to go and inspect the situation," Koizumi told the minister.

Authorities forced some 18,000 to evacuate their homes and another 5,000 households voluntarily went to temporary shelters, NHK said.

Tokage was early Thursday downgraded to a temperate depression and was moving east at 45 kilometers (28 miles) per hour, the Japan Meteorological Agency said.

The typhoon drenched Tokyo late Wednesday, causing the cancellation of bullet trains between the capital and Osaka and cancelling nearly 900 domestic flights. Power was temporarily cut off to thousands of homes.

Tokage is a record 10th major storm to hit Japan from the ocean in the past year.

Tokage, with an 800-kilometer (500-mile) radius, is the biggest typhoon to batter Japan since 1991 when the Meteorological Agency began classifying typhoons by the size of their storm zones.

The nine previous typhoons that have hit Japan this year caused a total of 102 deaths and left 13 missing and presumed dead.

Typhoon Ma-on slammed into the Tokyo metropolitan area on October 9, killing six people and paralyzing the capital's transport systems.

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