The five-seater plane crashed at about 02:00 GMT shortly after it had departed from Chofu airport in Tokyo, public broadcaster NHK reported.
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There were no other details about possible casualties and it was not known how many people were on the board the plane.
A woman on the second floor of a home that caught fire also died, NHK said, and another person in the same house was rescued by first responders.
Kyodo News also cited firefighters as saying four others sustained injuries due to the accident that took place at around 11 a.m. (0300GMT), setting five houses and a vehicle on fire.
Television footage showed a mangled plane, broken up with its tail upside down, resting on a residential lot where several house were burned down. “When I looked outside from a window, fire was flaring up”, an unidentified woman told NHK.
A firefighter rushes to the site where a light plane went down in a residential area and burst into flames, in Chofu, outskirt of Tokyo, July 26, 2015.
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“I have lived here for a long time and get used to the noise of light planes, but it was obviously abnormal”, Kotaro Sunaga, a 32-year-old businessman, told Jiji Press.
