A creaking economy, record unemployment levels and an aging population are not the only challenges facing the Democratic Party of Japan. One of its most pressing concerns has appeared in its own offices.

So lax was security at the headquarters of the DPJ–the party that prides itself on being accessible to all–that an aggrieved constituent was able to wander into the building, pull out a wooden sword and use it to smash the computer of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama.

According to the Metropolitan Police Department, the 24-year-old man appeared at the front of the first-floor entrance of the building housing the party’s headquarters in Tokyo’s Nagatacho district on the evening of Oct. 27.

None of the guards questioned the man, who was dressed in a suit and bound for the party’s seventh-floor reception area.

When he arrived, he brandished a 53-centimeter-long wooden sword in front of a female receptionist and raced up an emergency staircase to Hatoyama’s empty office, where he headed straight for the desk and proceeded to smash the prime minister’s computer until he was overpowered by guards.

He was arrested on the spot on suspicion of trespassing.

Via Asahi

Via Asahi