Japan witnessed yet another oddball crime Tuesday when a tax man turned to bank robbery in Nagoya and held a bank clerk at knifepoint for an hour before he was apprehended.

Junji Chatani, 42, an employee of the Sakurai Tax Office in Sakurai, Nara Prefecture, is suspected of entering the Higashi branch of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ around 11 a.m., armed with a 15-cm fish knife, police said.

He took a female clerk hostage and demanded 10 million yen in cash and a getaway car, police said. After his demand was rejected, he took the woman to a parking lot outside the branch.