Police on Saturday arrested a 14-year-old boy in Shimizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on suspicion of stabbing to death a 57-year-old man.
The teen, a second-year junior high school student, was apprehended in a corridor of an apartment in Shimizu where Kazuhiro Sugiyama was found dead near a second-floor passageway with a stab wound to the abdomen. Both the boy and the victim lived in the apartment.
A 54-year-old woman who lived with Sugiyama discovered his body at around 11:45 a.m. and notified police.
Officers found the boy at the site and arrested him after he confessed to the killing, police said. The boy's name has been withheld as he is a minor.
Police said Sugiyama often came to the boy's house to drink, and quarreled with his father. The two had argued Saturday morning.
The principal of the school the offender has been attending since February described him as a "quiet boy who is unlikely to cause problems."
The Diet last month enacted a bill to revise the Juvenile Law, introducing tougher measures to curb youth crime, such as lowering from 16 to 14 the minimum age at which children can be held criminally responsible.
The revision will take effect in April.