The Metropolitan Police Department has arrested Tamotsu Shiiki, a former Lower House lawmaker of Nippon Ishin no Kai, on suspicion of sexually assaulting a junior school girl at a karaoke parlor.
Shiiki, from the city of Urayasu, Chiba Prefecture, has denied the charge, saying, "We entered the karaoke room together, but there was no sexual intercourse."
The alleged incident occurred on the evening of Aug. 20 at a karaoke parlor in Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment district, where the 58-year-old former lawmaker is accused of sexually assaulting the first-year junior high school girl.
According to police, the girl explained that Shiiki had approached her on the streets of Kabukicho and they went to the karaoke parlor together. The two are believed to have been unacquainted prior to this incident.
A staff member of the establishment who was suspicious about the pair alerted the manager, who then contacted the police.
Shiiki was first elected to the House of Representatives in the 2012 general election. After losing his seat in 2014, he was reelected in 2015 as a runner-up in a proportional representation seat after Hirofumi Yoshimura, a former mayor of Osaka who is now governor of Osaka Prefecture, resigned from the Lower House to run for that year's Osaka mayoral election.
Shiiki ran again in the 2017 and 2021 general elections but failed to secure a seat.
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