A 38-year-old Wakayama man was arrested Saturday on suspicion of confining his 67-year-old mother to their home for seven years, police said.
The unemployed man apparently held a grudge against his mother after he was once referred to a mental hospital, they added. The mother, who was placed in protective police custody, was reportedly weak but her life is not in danger.
According to police, the man ordered the mother never to leave the house without him around April 1994. His name is being withheld due to his record of mental illness and police plan to have him undergo psychiatric tests.
The man and his mother lived in the two-story wooden house in a residential area in the northern part of the city. After his father died in 1988, the family lived on the father's savings and a pension for widows.