A senior health official was fatally stabbed early Saturday, and her 52-year-old brother was later arrested for the murder, which allegedly occurred at his Tokyo apartment, the police said.
Tomoko Kitajima, 56, was head of the Kanto-Shinetsu Regional Bureau of Health and Welfare, a unit of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry, the police said. Before taking the position last month, she had been vice governor of Niigata Prefecture.
Her brother is suspected of stabbing the elite-track bureaucrat in the abdomen at his Minato Ward apartment at around 5:15 a.m. Saturday. Kitajima lived nearby.