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Nearly 1.6 million people in eastern Japan have been ordered to evacuate as Typhoon Dujuan brings torrential rain, powerful winds, and landslides to the country's Pacific coast.

The internal affairs ministry said 1,674,084 people in Ibaraki, Chiba, Tokyo, Kanagawa, and Shizuoka prefectures were subject to evacuation orders.

In Sodegaura, a city in Chiba prefecture east of Tokyo, authorities issued a level-five alert, the highest in the warning system, for 40,000 residents, telling them to move above the second floors of their houses and stay away from slopes.

A level-five alert was also issued for 3,020 residents of the town of Oshima and the Izu Islands, south of Tokyo, where landslide and flooding risks remained the highest.

Landslide warnings were issued for Tokyo as well as for Chiba, Kanagawa and Shizuoka prefectures.

In Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo, firefighters were searching for a woman in her 60s after a landslide crushed the house she was in.

Yasuhiro Kaneko of the Yokosuka city fire department told the BBC that the woman was believed to have been buried alive and that rescue teams were working at the scene in heavy rain.

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A separate landslide in Sodegaura left a woman in her 40s with minor injuries, according to local media reports, and flooded roads disrupted traffic across the prefecture.

Dujuan is producing sustained winds of 130kmph at its centre, with gusts of up to 194kmph, the meteorological agency said.

Rainfall is expected to be heavy and persistent through the rest of Monday, with totals of up to 250mm forecast for the Kanto region, which includes Tokyo, and up to 350mm possible around the Tokai region further south.

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Takuya Hosomi, the agency's chief forecaster, said it was "extremely likely that some form of disaster has already occurred in landslide-prone areas and similar zones", and warned of "an imminent threat to life". He said the storm had intensified more than expected after slowing over unusually warm waters near the Izu Islands.

Pictures showed waterlogged roads and fallen trees as residents waded through water.

Kamakura city mayor Takashi Matsuo posted a photo of a partially submerged car on X.

"Various locations in the city are flooded, so traveling by car is dangerous," he warned.

Nearly 500 flights have been cancelled at Tokyo's Haneda and Narita airports, according to the aviation tracker Flightradar24, and some bullet train services on the Tokaido line have been suspended.

Prime minister Sanae Takaichi has delayed her trip to the US to monitor the storm's effects, local media reported.

Ms Takaichi had been due in New York on Tuesday to meet US president Donald Trump and address the UN General Assembly, but her flight was pushed back four hours to 11pm local time.

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The typhoon also disrupted the Asian Games, which opened over the weekend in Nagoya and the wider Aichi prefecture. An equestrian event on Monday was postponed to Tuesday, Reuters reported.

Around 4,000 competitors staying aboard the cruise ship Costa Serena may be asked to stay on board if the vessel needs to be relocated away from the storm, according to the Asahi Shimbun.

Dujuan is the 25th typhoon to form in the region this year in what forecasters describe as an unusually active season linked to a strong El Nino, the natural climate pattern that alters weather worldwide.

Last month, Chiba prefecture was hit by record rainfall that killed eight people and caused widespread flooding across 22 municipalities.

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