A senior Finance Ministry official was arrested Friday for allegedly beating and kicking a fellow passenger on a moving train in Tokyo, investigative sources said.
Heihachiro Ono, the 56-year-old deputy vice minister for policy planning and coordination, was drunk when he allegedly assaulted the passenger early Friday and denies having any recollection of the incident, the sources said. It is not clear whether his victim was injured.
The incident took place as the train was traveling on the Tokyu Denentoshi Line connecting Shibuya Station in Tokyo and Chuo-Rinkan Station in neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture. Ono was arrested near a ticket gate at Sakura-Shimmachi Station in Tokyo by officers who responded to an emergency call, the sources said.
After joining the ministry in 1989, Ono was appointed to key posts including director of the Budget Bureau, viewed by some in the ministry as a stepping-stone to vice finance minister, the ministry's top bureaucratic post.
He assumed his current post in July last year, taking charge of policy coordination with the Bank of Japan.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno refrained from commenting on the case at a news conference Friday, while the Finance Ministry said it was "confirming the facts."