A Japanese news agency is reporting 19 people have been killed and 20 injured in a knife attack outside Tokyo, in a facility for the disabled. Japanese media reports said he was 26 years old.
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At least 29 emergency squads reported to the facility in the wake of the attack, local reports said.
Police have said that of the 25 injured, 20 are in a serious condition.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that the police had not obtained any information to suggest there was a link between the attack and Islamist extremism.
Nineteen people were stabbed and killed in their sleep and at least 25 wounded at a facility for the disabled in Sagamihara in the early hours of Tuesday.
Uematsu was hospitalised on February 19, the same day he left his job at the care centre, but was discharged 12 days later when the doctor deemed he would not attack anyone, NHK said. Kyodo later said the death toll stood at 19.
Broadcaster NTV said the man told police he had been fired and held a grudge against the care centre.
“Many of the facility residents can not communicate very well verbally, because they are rather seriously disabled, but we smile at each other and dance together with the help of caretakers and volunteers”, she said.
Staff at the Tsukui Yamayuri-en facility in Sagamihara, west of Tokyo, called police at about 2:30 a.m., local time (1:30 p.m. EDT Monday) saying that a man with a knife had entered the building.
NHK reported that the facility is usually locked at night but the suspect broke into the building by smashing a window.
Mass killings are relatively rare in Japan, which has extremely strict gun-control laws. Earlier media reports had said as many as 45 people had been wounded.
That attack occurred on the same date that a man with a history of mental illness stabbed eight children to death at an Osaka primary school in 2001. In 2008, a man drove a truck into a packed shopping district at Akihabara in Tokyo, before climbing out and randomly stabbing people.
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After that rampage, Japan banned possession of double-edged knives with blades longer than 5.5 centimetres (about two inches), punishable by up to three years in prison or a 500,000 yen fine.
