TORNADOES IN JAPAN

Tornadoes are rare in Japan but they do occur at a rate of 20 or so a year, compared to 800 a year in the United States. Most tornadoes in Japan are relatively weak. On a scale of F1 (weakest) to F5 (strongest) only two F3s have ever been recorded: in Toyohashi in Aichi in 1999 and Mobara in Chiba in 1990. No F4s or F5s have ever been recorded.

In December 1990, a tornado ripped through a one-kilometer-wide area of Mohra, Chiba Prefecture, near Tokyo, killing one person and injuring 73. Eighty-two buildings were destroyed and 161 were damaged.[Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, September 2013]

In September 1999, a tornado tore through a 10-kilometer-long area in Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture near Nagoya. No-one was killed but 415 people were injured and many primary and muddle school students were hit by glass from shattered windows, Forty buildings were destroyed and 309 were damaged.

Tornadoes in Japan in the 2000s

In June 2004, tornado-like winds that reached speeds 250 kph in Saga Prefecture damaged 330 buildings, primarily by ripping off roofs, overturning vehicles and bringing down power lines.

In November 2006 a tornado struck the town of Saromacho in Hokkaido, killing nine people, mostly construction workers in the railroad-car-like office and injuring 31. Producing a funnel cloud and 200kph winds, it ripped off roofs, leveled rows of trees, toppled power poles, flipped cars and broke windows along a 200-meter-wide, one-kilometer trail, with most of the damage occurring in a 100 square meters area near a main road.
Seven building were destroyed and seven others were damaged.Most of the dead were construction workers gathered for a meeting in a lightweight prefabricated office that was blown apart by the tornado.

The tornado occurred during a spell of unusually warm weather when a mass of warm air collided with a mass of cold air. A tornado had been reported in that area before. Debris from the destroyed prefabricated building were found 1.2 kilometers from the site. Even so the tornado was regarded as only an F2.

In September 2006, a tornado kicked up by Typhoon 13 struck the city of Nobeoka in Miyazaki Prefecture in southern Kyushu in far southern Japan, killing three people and injuring 151. It destroyed roofs, broke windows in homes, schools and other buildings in a path about six kilometers long and 100 meters to 200 meters wide. Seventy-nine buildings were destroyed and 348 were damaged.

In October 2009, tornadoes battered towns in Aomori and Akita Prefectures. One man was injured. Several houses were damaged.

Boy Killed as Tornadoes, Storms Ravage Tokyo Area in May 2012

In May 2012, tornadoes hit Tochigi and Ibaraki Prefectures, doing the most damage in Tsukuba in Ibaraki, Prefecture. Damage occurred over a wide area in the Kanto and Tohuko areas in the central and northern Honshu. One person was killed in Ibaraki Prefecture and 52 people were injured. A total of 2,409 buildings were damaged in several prefectures.

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported: “A middle school student died and at least 52 other people were injured in the Kanto region (Tokyo area) when thunderstorms and tornadoes hit the region, according to local governments and police. Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, and Mooka, Tochigi Prefecture, were among the municipalities hit hardest by windstorms that occurred before 1 p.m. More than 890 buildings were damaged in the Kanto region, while power supply remained cut off for about 2,600 households in the two prefectures as of 1 p.m.. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, May 8, 2012]

“The Japan Meteorological Agency said it suspects the intensity of tornadoes that hit areas around the two municipalities was F2, the third-lowest level on the six-level Fujita-Pearson Tornado Scale. Keisuke Suzuki, 14, was confirmed dead after being discovered under his collapsed house in Tsukuba, according to police. A third-year student at Tsukuba-Higashi Middle School, Suzuki lived in the Hojo district, which suffered the most serious damage in the city. Signs of a strong windstorm were spotted over a stretch of nine kilometers, including the Hojo district.

“According to the Ibaraki prefectural government and other sources, a total of 440 buildings were damaged in the prefecture. The disaster caused blackouts for 21,700 households at about 2 p.m., with 2,510 still suffering from power outage as of 1 p.m.. The water supply for 5,200 households in Tsukuba was also cut off. In Tochigi Prefecture, 11 people were injured in Mooka, Mashiko and Motegi--all of which are located in the southeast region bordering Ibaraki Prefecture--while 451 buildings were damaged, mainly having their roof tiles blown off. The disaster caused a blackout for about 7,900 households in the three cities and two other municipalities. Of those, 70 were still suffering from power outages in Mooka as of 1 p.m..

In June 2012, Jiji Press reported: “The Japan Meteorological Agency has said the tornado that hit Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, last month was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan. The agency said it had upgraded the rating of the twister on May 6 to F3 from the previous F2 on an international six-level scale from F0 to F5.It was the fourth F3 tornado in Japan, according to the agency. A twister of that level killed nine people in the town of Saroma, Hokkaido Prefecture, in November 2006. An F3 tornado is said to be capable of lifting a vehicle. The agency assigned the rating to the Tsukuba twister because it blew away a house together with its base. In some places, the twister had the estimated power of an F4, officials said. [Source: Jiji Press, June 10, 2012]

“The intensity of tornadoes is rated by the internationally adapted Fujita-Pearson Tornado Scale, or F-Scale. The six-level scale ranges from F0 tornadoes of 61 kph to 115 kph to F5 tornadoes of 421 kph to 511 kph. Prof. Fumiaki Kobayashi of the National Defense Academy of Japan's Earth and Ocean Sciences Department told the Yomiuri Shimbun, "In general, the tornado can be categorized as an F2 twister with winds of more than 50 meters per second [180 kph]. But in places, winds may have been as powerful as an F3 [252 to 331 kph].”

Eyewitness Accounts from the May 2012 Kanto Tornadoes

The May 2012 tornado occurred on the final day of the Golden Week holiday period. It ripped houses off their foundations, tore roofs off buildings, toppled utility poles and turned automobiles upside down and wreaked havoc over a stretch of nine kilometers, beginning near the city's Yoshinuma district. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, May 8, 2012]

“According to Tadashi Utsuno, 68, president of Utsuno Ryokka Doboku, a horticultural firm, it started raining suddenly around noon and the unusually large raindrops prompted him to tell his workers to go inside the building. He then saw the tornado approaching about 300 meters from the southwest. He watched a gust of wind lift a steel prefabricated shed into the air with loud noise. As the tornado approached, Utsuno said he could not see anything in the swirling dust.

“Utsuno said he was almost blown out of the forklift he was operating at the time and clung desperately to the steering wheel. Drums, hurled into the air, rained down on him, hitting his shoulders and back.Shortly afterward, he saw his office's roof ripped off by the wind and crash to the ground after it was hurled into power lines about 300 meters away. "Things happened so fast. I thought I would die," Utsuno said.

“In the Hojo district, which suffered more damage than other areas, the tornado ripped houses off their foundations and an entire warehouse was blown away. Parked vehicles were turned over. A woman living in a five-story housing complex in the Hojo district said, "[The wind] whirling near the building sounded like a jetliner." A 38-year-old man living on the second floor of the housing complex said he returned home at about 1:20 p.m. after the tornado had passed through the area and found the door to his apartment open, even though it had been locked. The living room windows were broken, and he thought the wind had smashed the door open from inside the apartment.

Temperature Differences Spawned Deadly Tornado

The Yomiuri Shimbun reported: “The deadly tornado that hit a residential area in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, is believed to have been triggered by a temperature difference of more than 40 C between a high-altitude cold air mass and warm moist air near the ground, which developed a cumulonimbus cloud and a rotating ascending air current. [Source: Yomiuri Shimbun, May 8, 2012]

“Japan Meteorological Agency radars detected a cumulonimbus cloud 10 to 20 kilometers in diameter, suggesting that a so-called supercell thundercloud developed around the time of the incident. Supercell clouds, cumulonimbus clouds several times bigger than usual, tend to trigger powerful tornadoes. According to the agency, a cold air mass with temperatures lower than minus 21 C moved over Japan at an altitude of about 5,500 meters, while warm humid air moved from the south toward a low-pressure area over the Sea of Japan. At about 1 p.m., when the tornado hit Tsukuba, the surface temperature of the city was 25.6 C, higher than the average high of 21.3 C in the area.

“Since about a month ago, an upper polar front jet stream has been meandering around the Japanese archipelago. As a result, unstable conditions that invite cold air are repeatedly created every seven to 10 days. The "bomb low pressure" that brought heavy rains and winds in early April also was caused by these unstable conditions.

Tornado-like Wind Kills Three in Southwestern Japan

In November 2011, a tornado ripped through a half-kilometer-wide area in Tokunoshima, in Kagoshima Prefecture, in southern Japan, killing two men and one woman and destroying a private house.

Kyodo reported: “A Tornado-like strong wind destroyed a house in the town of Tokunoshima in Kagoshima Prefecture in southwestern Japan, killing three people. The wind blew away two men and a woman to a field about 100 meters away from the house, the report quoted local police as saying. The three people were confirmed dead after being taken to a hospital. [Source: Kyodo, November 19, 2011]

Firefighters said the pieces of the collapsed one-story wooden house were found near the field where the three were found and that a car parked nearby was shifted about 10 meters by the windblast. The site is located in a mountainous area in northern Tokunoshima, a remote island, and houses there are scattered in sugarcane fields. The Kagoshima Local Meteorological Observatory said it will investigate into the nature of the windblast, according to the report.

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons

Text Sources: Japan National Tourist Organization (JNTO), CIA World Factbook], Library of Congress, Daily Yomiuri, National Geographic, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Smithsonian magazine, Encyclopedia.com, Live Science, The Conversation, The New Yorker, Time, BBC, CNN, Reuters, Associated Press, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, Google AI, Wikipedia, The Guardian and various websites, books and other publications.

Last updated June 2026