TOKYO: Tokyo police on Saturday arrested a man in his 30s for allegedly stealing a pure golden tea bowl from an event site at an outlet of major Japanese department store operator Takashimaya Co. in the country’s capital.

According to sources including Tokyo’s Metropolitan Police Department, the bowl, made of 24-karat gold, is priced at 10,406,000 yen. It was stolen around 11:40 a.m. Thursday from the exhibition event venue on the eighth floor of Takashimaya’s Nihonbashi store in Tokyo’s Chuo Ward.

Security camera footage showed a man putting the bowl in his backpack and fleeing toward Nihonbashi Station of subway operator Tokyo Metro Co. about 30 minutes later.

MPD investigators found the man in Tokyo on Saturday and questioned him on a voluntary basis before arresting him.

At the event, being held for six days until Monday, a total of more than 1,000 pure golden items are on display, including a screen with a reference price of 100 million yen and a 2.1-meter-tall dragon using about 3,000 sheets of golden leaf and having a reference price of 38 million yen, according to Takashimaya and a company that organized the event.

The golden tea bowl in question was showcased in the hexagonal acrylic box without any alarm or lock. Takashimaya Co. said in a press conference Friday that a salesperson near the bowl was turning around slightly at the time of the theft, having to attend other visitors.

JIJI Press