Typhoon Dujuan: one dead in the US report, none in Delo's

On Monday at noon, less than half an hour apart, two versions of Japan existed for the same typhoon. In one, a person was dead. In the other, nobody was.

At 12.58, Delo, a Slovenian daily, published an AFP wire report on Typhoon Dujuan moving towards Tokyo. The paragraph on casualties reads in full:

"So far, one person has been lightly injured and nine houses damaged because of the typhoon, AFP reports." (translated)

The US agency UPI, on the same day at 6.21 US Eastern time (12.21 in Slovenia, so thirty-seven minutes earlier), had this in the same story:

"In Miyazaki Prefecture one person was killed and a woman in her 40s was injured in a landslide in Sodegaura city on the Boso Peninsula, according to the Fire and Disaster Management Agency."

One dead, one injured woman in her forties, a landslide, and the source is the same Japanese Fire and Disaster Management Agency that everyone cites.

Except this sentence does not hold up either. Sodegaura lies on the Boso Peninsula in Chiba Prefecture, just east of Tokyo, exactly where landslide warnings were issued. Miyazaki Prefecture is on the island of Kyushu, a thousand kilometres to the southwest, and there was no typhoon there this Monday. The only wire report that has a dead person cannot place them in the right prefecture.

Call, order or instruction: pick your own

The second discrepancy is in the headlines, and it is a legal one.

Delo: residents were "called on to evacuate, but the evacuation is not mandatory". UPI in its headline: "Evacuation orders issued", and in the body that authorities "ordered ... to leave their homes". Serbian portals wrote the same day about an "ordered emergency evacuation". The same move by Japanese local authorities got three different levels of compulsion in three languages.

The Japanese original contains neither a call nor an order. It is level 4 on a five-level scale, officially called hinan shiji, an evacuation instruction. The Japan tourism agency explains it in its official English translation, citing the Cabinet Office, as follows:

"The following actions are generally required. Please immediately evacuate from anywhere in danger."

"Generally required." "Please immediately evacuate." Please. That is the word addressed on Monday to 1.6 million people in and around Tokyo. Whether ignoring it carries a penalty is not clear from the official text, and we could not check it with the Japanese crisis management office. We claim neither one thing nor the other. We claim only that the "order" in the UPI headline is something the original does not contain.

Three more numbers that do not match

AFP, via the Jakarta Post, counted by airline:

"Japan Airlines cancelled 120 domestic and 15 international flights, while All Nippon Airways cancelled 140 domestic flights." (translated)

That makes 275 in total. UPI wrote the same day "as many as 500" cancelled flights at Haneda and Narita, and Serbian media repeated "over 500 flights". Delo, incidentally, is precise here: the 135 for JAL is 120 domestic plus 15 international.

Households without power: AFP has "more than 4,000" in Chiba, Delo "more than 9,000" near Tokyo. Wind speed: AFP 144 kilometres per hour, UPI "more than 120 mph", which is 193. The same typhoon, the same hour, a difference of fifty kilometres per hour.

What is not in dispute

The Japan Meteorological Agency warned on Sunday:

"The total rainfall through Tuesday could exceed the average monthly rainfall for September, resulting in record-breaking heavy rain."

A music festival and a baseball game in Chiba were cancelled, the last day of the Tokyo Game Show was closed early, railway operators suspended service on parts of their lines, and Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's departure for the UN General Assembly was postponed by several hours. On Sunday, pedestrians crossed the Shibuya crossing with umbrellas, because a few hours later came rain that is measured there by the monthly average.

Slovenian media reported all of this correctly. One person is missing.

By Tuesday we will know how many there were. Until then we have two death tolls, three figures for cancelled flights and one prefecture too many.