The farming area of Tsunan, around 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Tokyo, has seen up to 390 centimetres (13 feet) of snow dumped on some locations where cold air from Siberia collided with the mountains.

The bad weather Monday gave way to sunshine and brought some respite, but it also brought fears of avalanches which hampered efforts to clear snow from roads and other areas.

"I haven't seen sunshine like this for weeks. Even if the sun shone briefly before, it was always snowing," said Chieko Baba, a government official in the town of Tsunan.

The official said around 100 soldiers had joined snow clearing operations in the area but they did not venture on to the main highway because of avalanche warnings.

Baba said around 200 houses remain cut off because of the highway's closure and schools in the region would not open until Wednesday because paths to the premises were blocked.

"Farmers usually go to cities for seasonal jobs in the winter but they cannot do so this year. They need to keep removing snow to save their houses," she said.

Kunihiko Yamagishi, a weatherman at the Japan Meteorological Agency, warned that despite Monday's lull more snow was expected. "People must also remain alert for avalanches," he added.

He attributed the heavy snowfalls, which have been blamed for 70 deaths so far, to waves of freezing air, below minus 40 degrees Celsius (minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit), coming from an unusually strong cold air mass over Siberia.

In the latest reported fatalities an 89-year-old man was found dead in a pond in his backyard with a shovel beside his body and a 86-year-old woman died buried in the snow at the back of her house.

Both were believed to have been shovelling snow at the time.

Five others died on Sunday, including a 55-year-old woman who suffocated after snow slid off the roof of her house and buried her. A 55-year-old farmer fell while removing snow from the roof of a warehouse.

A 58-year-old man who went missing several weeks ago was found dead about two meters (seven feet) under the snow at Aomori on the northern tip of Honshu island. His family believed he had gone to work in the city, reports said.

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