Li Guolin was exercising in a prison yard when he stripped off his convict's uniform and used scaffolding erected by builders to climb over a five-meter perimeter fence Wednesday, Kyodo news agency said. The report quoted a security guard saying Li "fell on his rear and turned over. Then he ran off at a steady trot."

At the time the temperature was around 4 degrees C (39 degrees F). Prison breakouts are extremely rare in Japan. The Mainichi Shimbun said it was the country's first escape since 1990, when a youth fled a juvenile detention center.