Killer Typhoon Pounds Japan; at Least 45 Die : Disasters: More than 700 injured in worst storm to hit islands in 30 years. Record power outages are left by 133-m.p.h winds.

Typhoon Mireille, Japan’s worst storm in three decades, pounded both ends of that country Saturday with winds of up to 133 m.p.h., leaving at least 45 people dead and more than 700 injured, officials said.

The typhoon also has caused record power outages and flooded thousands of homes since it struck on Friday.

Officials expressed relief that it only brushed the heavily populated main island of Honshu, where Tokyo and Osaka are located, before heading out to sea Saturday.

Yoshu Toba of the Central Meteorological Agency said the typhoon was the strongest to hit Japan since 1961, when a storm left nearly 200 people dead.

After grazing the southwestern tip of the westernmost main island of Kyushu, Mireille moved into the Sea of Japan on Friday night, then veered and ripped through the northernmost main island of Hokkaido.

By late Saturday, it had been downgraded to a tropical storm and was passing through the sparsely populated Kurile Islands in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Hokkaido, meteorologists said.

The typhoon’s fury was felt in 41 of 47 prefectures, or states, the National Police Agency said. At least 45 people were killed, mostly by falling debris, landslides and floods, it said. Six people were missing and 777 injured.

The Maritime Safety Agency, Japan’s coast guard, said four of the missing were crewmen of a capsized South Korean cargo ship. Coast guard patrol boats conducted an intensive search late into Saturday night, it said.

The typhoon capsized or washed away 42 boats, smashed or destroyed 117 homes, damaged 20,779 homes and buildings and flooded 10,665 others. The storm collapsed roofs and walls and uprooted trees.

Nagasaki, 600 miles southwest of Tokyo, and its neighboring cities on the southwestern shores were the hardest hit. A total of 16 people were killed there, according to police reports.

Electric-company officials said more than 3.6 million households, including 2 million on the island Kyushu alone, had been affected by temporary power outages Friday night and early Saturday. It was the nation’s worst typhoon-related blackout on record, they said.

Japan’s typhoon season begins in July and usually ends in October. A weaker typhoon last week killed 15 people.