Japan mass stabbing: One child, suspected attacker confirmed dead in attack

More than a dozen people have been injured in a stabbing attack southwest of central Tokyo on Tuesday morning.

The scene of the attack. Source: AAP

A knife-wielding attacker killed a 12-year-old schoolgirl and a man before stabbing himself to death in a rampage outside Tokyo Tuesday that also injured more than a dozen, including several children.

The mass stabbing in the town of Kawasaki, south of the Japanese capital, was a rare attack in a country with one of the lowest rates of violent crime in the developed world, and there was no immediate detail on the suspect's motive.

Kiyoshi Matsuda, deputy director of the Nippon Medical School Musashi Kosugi Hospital, told reporters that the 12-year-old schoolgirl and a 39-year-old man had succumbed to their injuries.

Local media reported that the suspected attacker, a man in his 50s, had also died of his wounds after turning the knife on himself. Emergency services said at least 16 others had been injured in the attack.

"It is a very harrowing case. I feel strong anger," Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said in televised remarks.

"I offer my heartfelt condolences to the victims and hope the injured recover quickly."

According to local media, eyewitnesses saw a middle-aged man clasping a knife near the bus stop where the children were waiting, shouting "I will kill you".

The scene of the attack in Kawasaki. Source: AAP

A local man living nearby, who identified himself as Matsumoto, 25, said he went outside after hearing screams.

"It's hard to describe what it was like, how it sounded. It wasn't girls having fun, it was a sound that was absolutely not normal," he told AFP.

The street of the attack. Source: AAP

"I saw a man lying on the street. I also saw a girl hunched over on the ground. There were also five or six girls, maybe they were the ones who screamed... There was blood all over them."