Early life
Sada Abe was born in 1905. Her mother doted on her
youngest child and let her do as she wished. She encouraged Abe to
take lessons in singing and in playing the shamisen, both
activities which, at the time, were more closely associated with
geisha and prostitutes than with classical artistic endeavor. Geishas
were considered glamorous celebrities, and Abe herself followed the
image by skipping school for these lessons, and wearing stylish
make-up. As family problems over her siblings, sister Teruko and
brother Shintaro, became more pressing, Abe was often sent out of the
house alone. She soon fell in with a group of similarly independent
teenagers.
At the age of 15, during one of these outings, she
was raped by one of her acquaintances, and even though her parents
defended and supported her, she became a difficult teenager. As she
became more irresponsible and uncontrollable, her parents sold her to
a geisha house in Yokohama in 1922, hoping to find her a place in
society with some direction. Toku Abe, Sada's oldest sister, testified
that Sada wished to become a geisha. Sada herself, however, claimed
that her father made her a geisha as punishment for her promiscuity.
Abe's encounter with the geisha world proved
frustrating and disappointing. To become a true star among geisha
required apprenticeship from childhood with years spent studying arts
and music. Abe wound up a low-ranking geisha, in which her main duties
were to provide sex. She worked for five years in this capacity, and
eventually contracted syphilis. Since this meant she would be required
to undergo regular examinations, like a legally licensed prostitute,
Abe decided to enter that better-paying profession.
Early 1930s
Abe began work as a prostitute in Osaka's famous
Tobita brothel district, but soon gained a reputation as a
trouble-maker. She stole money from clients, and attempted to leave
the brothel several times, but was tracked down by the well-organized
legal prostitution system. After two years, she eventually succeeded
in escaping the licensed prostitution system, and began working as a
waitress. However, not satisfied with the wages, she was soon working
as a prostitute again, though now unlicensed. She began working in
Osaka's unlicensed brothels in 1932. Abe's mother died in January
1933, and Abe went to Tokyo to visit her father and her mother's
grave. She entered into the prostitution market in Tokyo and became a
mistress there for the first time. When her father became seriously
ill in January 1934, Abe nursed him for ten days until his death.
In October 1934 Abe was arrested in a police raid
on the unlicensed brothel at which she was working. Kinnosuke
Kasahara, a well-connected friend of the brothel owner, arranged to
have the women released. He was attracted to Abe, and, finding that
she had no debts, and with Abe's agreement, made her his mistress.
Kasahara set up a house for Abe on December 20, 1934, and provided her
with money. In his deposition to the police, he remembered, "She was
really strong, a real powerful one. Even though I am pretty jaded, she
was enough to astound me. She wasn't satisfied unless we did it two,
three, or four times a night. To her, it was unacceptable unless I had
my hand on her private parts all night long... At first it was great,
but after a couple of weeks I got a little exhausted." When Abe
suggested that Kasahara leave his wife to marry her, he refused. She
then asked Kasahara to let her take a lover, which he also refused to
do. After that, their relationship ended, and to escape him Abe left
for Nagoya.
Kasahara ended his testimony with an angry remark
about Abe, "She is a slut and a whore. And as what she has done makes
clear, she is a woman whom men should fear." Likewise, Abe remembered
Kasahara in less than flattering terms, saying, "He didn't love me and
treated me like an animal. He was the kind of scum who would then
plead with me when I said that we should break up."
In Nagoya in 1935, again intending to leave the sex
industry, Abe began working as a maid at a restaurant. She soon became
romantically involved with a customer at the restaurant, Goro Omiya, a
professor and banker who aspired to become a member of the Diet of
Japan. Knowing that the restaurant would not tolerate a maid having
sexual relations with clients, and bored with Nagoya, she returned to
Tokyo in June. Omiya met Abe in Tokyo, and, finding that she had
contracted syphilis, paid for her stay in a hot springs resort in
Kusatsu from November until January 1936. In January, Omiya suggested
that Abe could become financially independent by opening a small
restaurant, and recommended that she start work in an apprentice
position in such a business.
Acquaintance with Kichizo Ishida
Back in Tokyo, Abe began work as an apprentice at
the Yoshidaya on February 1, 1936. The owner of this establishment,
Kichizo Ishida, 42 at the time, had worked his way up in business,
starting as an apprentice at an eel restaurant. He had opened the
Yoshidaya in Tokyo's Nakano neighborhood in 1920. When Abe joined his
restaurant, Ishida was known as a womanizer who did little in the way
of running the restaurant, which was managed mostly by his wife.
Not long after she began work at Yoshidaya, Ishida
began making advances towards Abe. Omiya had never satisfied Abe
sexually, and she gave in to Ishida. In mid-April, Ishida and Abe
initiated their sexual relationship in the restaurant, to the
accompaniment of a romantic ballad sung by one of the restaurant's
geishas.
On April 23, 1936 Abe and Ishida met for a
pre-arranged sexual encounter at a teahouse, or machiai – the
contemporary equivalent of a love hotel – in the Shibuya neighborhood.
Planning only a short 'fling', the couple remained in bed for four
days.
On the night of April 27, 1936, they moved to
another teahouse in the distant neighborhood of Futako Tamagawa. Here
they continued to drink and have sex, sometimes with the accompaniment
of a geisha's singing. They would continue even as maids entered the
room to serve sake.
They next moved their marathon love-making bout to
the Ogu neighborhood. Ishida did not return to the restaurant until
the morning of May 8, 1936. Of Ishida, Abe later said, "It is hard to
say exactly what was so good about Ishida. But it was impossible to
say anything bad about his looks, his attitude, his skill as a lover,
the way he expressed his feelings. I had never met such a sexy man."
After they separated, Abe became agitated and began
drinking excessively. She claimed that with Ishida she knew love for
the first time in her life, and the thought that Ishida was back with
his wife made her jealous. Over a week before the murder, Abe began
considering the act.
On May 9, 1936, she attended a play in which a
geisha attacks her lover with a large knife. After seeing this, Abe
decided to threaten Ishida with a knife at their next meeting. On May
11, 1936, she pawned some of her clothing and used the money to buy
some sushi and a kitchen knife. Abe later described meeting Ishida
that night, "I pulled the kitchen knife out of my bag and threatened
him as had been done in the play I had seen, saying, 'Kichi, you wore
that kimono just to please one of your favorite customers. You
bastard, I'll kill you for that.' Ishida was startled and drew away a
little, but he seemed delighted with it all..."
"Abe Sada
Incident"
Ishida and Abe returned to Ogu, where they remained
until his death. During their love-making this time, Abe put the knife
to the base of Ishida's penis, and said she would make sure he would
never play around with another woman. Ishida laughed at this. Two
nights into this bout of sex, Abe began choking Ishida, and he told
her to continue, saying that this increased his pleasure. She had him
do it to her as well.
On the evening of May 16, 1936, Abe used her obi
sash to cut off Ishida's breathing during orgasm, and they both
enjoyed it. They repeated this for two more hours. Once Abe stopped
the strangulation, Ishida's face became distorted, and would not
return to its normal appearance. Ishida took 30 tablets of a sedative
called Calmotin to try to soothe his pain. According to Abe, as Ishida
started to doze, he told her, "You'll put the cord around my neck and
squeeze it again while I'm sleeping, won't you... If you start to
strangle me, don't stop, because it is so painful afterward." Abe
commented that she wondered if he had wanted her to kill him, but on
reflection decided he must have been joking.
About 2 a.m. on the morning of May 18, 1936, as
Ishida was asleep, Abe wrapped her sash twice around his neck and
strangled him to death. She later told police, "After I had killed
Ishida I felt totally at ease, as though a heavy burden had been
lifted from my shoulders, and I felt a sense of clarity." After lying
with Ishida's body for a few hours, she next severed his genitalia
with the kitchen knife, wrapped them in a magazine cover, and kept
them until her arrest three days later. With the blood she wrote
Sada, Kichi Futari-kiri ("Sada, Kichi together") on Ishida's left
thigh, and on a bed sheet. She then carved 定 ("Sada", the character
for her name) into his left arm. After putting on Ishida's underwear,
she left the inn at about 8 a.m., telling the staff not to disturb
Ishida. When asked why she had severed Ishida's genitalia, Abe
replied, "Because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted
to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid
memories."
After leaving the inn, Abe met Goro Omiya. She
repeatedly apologized to him, but Omiya, unaware of the murder,
assumed that she was apologizing for having taken another lover. Abe's
apologies were for the damage to his political career that she knew
his association with her was bound to cause. On May 19, 1936, the
newspapers picked up the story. Omiya's career was ruined, and Abe's
life was under intense public scrutiny from that point onwards.
Abe Sada panic
The story immediately became a national sensation,
and the ensuing frenzy over her search was called "Abe Sada panic".
Police received reports of sightings of Abe from various cities, and
one false sighting nearly caused a stampede in the Ginza, resulting in
a large traffic jam. In a reference to the recent failed coup in
Tokyo, the Ni Ni-Roku Incident ("2-26" or "February 26"), the crime
was satirically dubbed the "Go Ichi-Hachi" Incident ("5-18" or "May
18").
On May 19, 1936, Abe went shopping and saw a movie.
She stayed in an inn in Shinagawa on May 20, where she had a massage
and drank three bottles of beer. She spent the day writing farewell
letters to Omiya, a friend, and Ishida. She planned to commit suicide
one week after the murder, and practiced necrophilia. "I felt attached
to Ishida's penis and thought that only after taking leave from it
quietly could I then die. I unwrapped the paper holding them and gazed
at his penis and scrotum. I put his penis in my mouth and even tried
to insert it inside me... It didn't work however though I kept trying
and trying. Then, I decided that I would flee to Osaka, staying with
Ishida's penis all the while. In the end, I would jump from a cliff on
Mount Ikoma while holding on to his penis."
At 4:00 in the afternoon, police detectives,
suspicious of the alias under which Abe had registered, came to her
room. "Don't be so formal," she told them, "You're looking for Sada
Abe, right? Well that's me. I am Sada Abe." When the police were not
convinced, she displayed Ishida's genitalia as proof.
Abe was arrested and interrogated over eight
sessions. The interrogating officer was struck by Abe's demeanor when
asked why she had killed Ishida. "Immediately she became excited and
her eyes sparkled in a strange way." Her answer was: "I loved him so
much, I wanted him all to myself. But since we were not husband and
wife, as long as he lived he could be embraced by other women. I knew
that if I killed him no other woman could ever touch him again, so I
killed him....." In attempting to explain what distinguished Abe's
case from over a dozen other similar cases in Japan, William Johnston
suggests that it is this answer which captured the imagination of the
nation. "She had killed not out of jealousy but out of love." Mark
Schreiber notes that the Sada Abe incident occurred at a time when the
Japanese media were preoccupied with extreme political and military
troubles, including the Ni Ni Roku incident and a looming full-scale
war in China. He suggests that a sensationalistic sex scandal such as
this served as a welcome national release from the disturbing events
of the time. The incident also struck a chord with the
ero-guro-nansensu ("erotic-grotesque-nonsense") style popular at
the time, and the Sada Abe Incident came to represent that genre for
years to come.
When the details of the crime were made public,
rumors began to circulate that Ishida's penis was of extraordinary
size; however, the police officer who interrogated Abe after her
arrest denied this, saying, "Ishida's was just average. [Abe] told me,
'Size doesn't make a man in bed. Technique and his desire to please me
were what I liked about Ishida.'" After her arrest, Ishida's penis and
testicles were moved to Tokyo University Medical School's pathology
museum. They were put on public display soon after the end of World
War II, but have since disappeared.
Conviction and sentencing
The first day of Abe's trial was November 25, 1936,
and by 5 a.m. crowds were already gathering to attend. The judge
presiding over the trial admitted to being sexually aroused by some of
the details involved in the case, yet made sure that the trial was
held with the utmost seriousness. Abe's statement before receiving
sentencing began, "The thing I regret most about this incident is that
I have come to be misunderstood as some kind of sexual pervert...
There had never been a man in my life like Ishida. There were men I
liked, and with whom I slept without accepting money, but none made me
feel the way I did toward him."
On December 21, 1936 Abe was convicted of murder in
the second degree and mutilation of a corpse. Though the prosecution
demanded ten years, and Abe claimed that she desired the death
penalty, she was in fact sentenced to just six years in prison. She
was confined in Tochigi women's penitentiary, where she was prisoner
No. 11.
Abe's sentence was commuted on November 10, 1940,
on the occasion of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the
mythical founding of Japan, when Emperor Jimmu came to the throne. She
was released, exactly five years after the murder, on May 17, 1941.
The police record of Abe's interrogation and
confession became a national best-seller in 1936. Christine L. Marran
puts the national fascination with Abe's story within the context of
the dokufu or "poison woman" stereotype, a transgressive female
character type which had first become popular in Japanese serialized
novels and stage works in the 1870s. In the wake of the popular
"poison woman" literature, confessional autobiographies by female
criminals had begun appearing in the late 1890s.
By the early 1910s, autobiographical writings by
criminal women took on an unapologetic tone and sometimes included
criticisms of Japan and Japanese society. Kanno Suga, who was hanged
in 1911 for conspiring to assassinate Emperor Meiji in what was known
as the High Treason Incident, wrote openly rebellious essays while in
prison. Fumiko Kaneko, who was sentenced to death for plotting to bomb
the imperial family, used her notoriety to speak against the imperial
system and the racism and paternalism which she said it engendered.
Abe's confession, in the years since its appearance, became the most
circulated female criminal narrative in Japan. Marran points out that
Abe, unlike previous criminal autobiographers, stressed her sexuality
and the love she felt for her victim.
Later life
Upon release from prison, Abe assumed an alias. As
the mistress of a "serious man" she referred to in her memoirs as "Y",
she moved first to Ibaraki Prefecture and then to Saitama Prefecture.
When Abe's true identity became known to Y's friends and family, she
broke off their relationship.
Wishing to divert public attention from politics
and criticism of the occupying authorities, the Yoshida government
openly encouraged a "3-S" policy — "sports, screen and sex". This
change from the strict pre-war censorship of materials labeled obscene
or immoral helped enable a change in the tone of literature on Abe.
Pre-war writings, such as The Psychological
Diagnosis of Abe Sada (1937) depict Abe as an example of the
dangers of unbridled female sexuality and as a threat to the
patriarchal system. In the postwar era, she was treated as a critic of
totalitarianism, and a symbol of freedom from oppressive political
ideologies. Abe became a popular subject in literature of both high
and low quality. The buraiha writer, Oda Sakunosuke, wrote two
stories based on Abe, and a June 1949 article noted that Abe had
recently tried to clear her name after it had been used in a
"mountain" of erotic books.
In 1946 the writer Ango Sakaguchi interviewed Abe,
treating her as an authority on both sexuality and freedom. Sakaguchi
called Abe a "tender, warm figure of salvation for future
generations". In 1947 The Erotic Confessions of Abe Sada became
a national best-seller, with over 100,000 copies sold. The book was in
the form of an interview with Sada Abe, but was actually based on the
police interrogation records. Angry that he had implied that the book
was based on interviews he had made with her, Abe sued the author,
Ichiro Kimura, for libel and defamation of character. The result of
the lawsuit is not known, but it is assumed to have been settled out
of court. As a response to this book, Abe wrote her own autobiography,
Memoirs of Abe Sada. In contrast to Kimura's depiction of her
as a pervert, she stressed her love for Ishida.
The first edition of the magazine True Story
(実話,
Jitsuwa), in January 1948, featured previously
unpublished photos of the incident with the headline "Ero-guro of the
Century! First Public Release. Pictorial of the Abe Sada Incident."
Reflecting the change in tone in writings on Abe, the June 1949 issue
of Monthly Reader calls her a "Heroine of That Time", for
following her own desires in a time of "false morality" and
oppression.
Abe capitalized on her notoriety by sitting for an
interview in a popular magazine, and appearing for several years in a
traveling stage production called Showa Ichidai Onna (A
Woman of the Showa Period). In 1952 she began working at the
Hoshikikusui, a working-class pub in Inari-cho, downtown Tokyo. She
lived a low-profile life in Tokyo's Shitaya neighborhood for the next
20 years, and her neighborhood restaurant association gave her a
"model employee" award.
More than once, during the 1960s, film-critic
Donald Richie visited the Hoshikikusui. In his collection of profiles,
Japanese Portraits, he describes Abe making a dramatic entrance
into a boisterous group of drinkers. She would slowly descend a long
staircase that led into the middle of the crowd, fixing a haughty gaze
on individuals in her audience. The men in the pub would respond by
putting their hands over their crotches, and shouting out things like,
"Hide the knives!" and "I'm afraid to go and pee!" Abe would slap the
banister in anger and stare the crowd into an uncomfortable and
complete silence, and only then continue her entrance, chatting and
pouring drinks from table to table. Richie comments, "...she had
actually choked a man to death and then cut off his member. There was
a consequent frisson when Sada Abe slapped your back."
In 1969 Abe appeared in the "Sada Abe Incident"
section of director Teruo Ishii's dramatized documentary History of
Bizarre Crimes by Women in the Meiji Taisho and Showa Eras
(明治大正昭和 猟奇女犯罪史,
Meiji Taisho Showa Ryoki Onna Hanzaishi), and the last
known photograph of Abe was taken in August of that year, She
disappeared from the public eye for good in 1970. When the film In
the Realm of the Senses was being planned in the mid 1970s,
director Nagisa Oshima apparently sought out Abe and, after a long
search, found her, her hair shorn, in a Kansai nunnery.
Legacy
Decades after both the incident and her
disappearance, Sada Abe continues to draw public interest. In addition
to the documentary in which Abe herself appeared shortly before she
disappeared from the public eye, at least three successful films have
been made based on the story. The 1983 film, Sexy Doll: Abe Sada
Sansei, made use of Abe's name in the title. In 1998, a 438-page
biography of Abe was published in Japan, and the first full-length
book on Abe in English, William Johnston's Geisha, Harlot,
Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan, was
published in 2005.
Japanese Noise musician Merzbow adopted the alias
Abe Sada for an early musical project. He released only one record
under this name, the 1994 7" Original Body Kingdom/Gala Abe Sada
1936.
