Typhoon No. 12 (Talas) has brought heavy rains mainly in western Japan. As of the night of Sept. 5, 37 people had died and 54 others were missing. Among the typhoons that hit Japan since 1989, when the Heisei Era started, the latest one caused the second largest number of deaths and missing victims, following Typhoon No. 23 of 2004, which caused 98 people either to die or to go missing.
Hardest hit by Typhoon No. 12 was the Kii Peninsula of Honshu, where unprecedented rainfalls killed some 30 people and caused some 50 others to become missing.
The damage from the typhoon has become a big domestic task for the Noda administration to tackle. It must do its best to help rescue people trapped in debris or in earth and sand or left in isolated communities, find missing people, and restore damaged roads, bridges and other infrastructure.