  We report a study of the charmless hadronic decay of the charged $B$ meson to
the three-body final state $K^+ K^- \pi^+$. The results are based on a data
sample that contains $772\times10^6$ $B \bar{B}$ pairs collected at the
$\Upsilon(4S)$ resonance with the Belle detector at the KEKB asymmetric-energy
$e^+ e^-$ collider. The measured inclusive branching fraction and the direct
$CP$ asymmetry are $(5.38\pm0.40\pm0.35)\times 10^{-6}$ and
$-0.170\pm0.073\pm0.017$, respectively, where the first uncertainties are
statistical and the second are systematic. The $K^{+}K^{-}$ invariant mass
distribution of the signal candidates shows an excess in the region below $1.5$
GeV/$c^2$, which is consistent with the previous studies from BaBar and LHCb.
In addition, strong evidence of a large direct $CP$ asymmetry is found in the
$K^{+}K^{-}$ low-invariant-mass region.
