Abe Sada – The Killing Geisha

Sada Abe was a Japanese geisha and prostitute, famous for killing and castrating her lover and carrying his genitals in her kimono for several days, until the day of her arrest. Her case shocked 1930s Japan and has since inspired novels, films and documentaries.

Family

Sada Abe came from an upper middle-class family of tatami makers in Tokyo’s Kanda district. The seventh of eight children, she was the youngest of the 4 who survived. Her father, who was 52 when she was born, was described by police as an honest and upright man who never had trouble with the law, while her mother was said to have had some “moral flaws”.

Sada’s brother was a womaniser who, after marrying, ran off with his parents’ money. One of her sisters also had many lovers, and their father punished her by sending her to work in a brothel. This was a typical punishment to correct women’s morals and, once brought back home, she married.

Sada Abe’s childhood

Sada was born on 28 May 1905 and, being the youngest of the Abe family, her mother spoiled her and let her choose what to do. From childhood she showed a strong interest in the world of geishas and entertainment and wanted to take shamisen lessons, an instrument linked to the world of geishas and prostitution.

As a teenager she fell into bad company and, after a traumatic episode at 15, became a rebellious adolescent. When she became unmanageable, in 1922, her father decided to sell her to a geisha house in Yokohama.

Her elder sister recalled that it had been Sada’s wish to work there, while Sada said she had been sent there as punishment by her father, to correct her promiscuous behaviour.

Prostitution

She was not, however, taken on as a real geisha or as an apprentice geisha (maiko): at 17 she was considered too old for the long training, and ended up entertaining clients sexually.

After 5 years she contracted syphilis and from then on had to undergo regular check-ups, just like prostitutes, who at the time worked legally, with a licence. She therefore decided to become a fully-fledged prostitute, since it would earn her more.

She began working in Osaka, where she got a bad reputation for robbing clients. She tried several times to run away, but was always caught. After a few years she finally escaped and began working as a maid. Not satisfied with the pay, however, she decided to go back to prostitution, this time without a licence, and in 1932 began working in an illegal brothel in Osaka.

In 1934 the police raided it and Sada Abe was arrested. A well-connected friend of the brothel owner saw Sada and fell in love with her. He got her released, made her his mistress and gave her a house and an allowance.

Interviewed later, he said she was a very strong woman who wanted to make love at least 3 or 4 times a day. At first it was great, but after two weeks the man was exhausted. Sada asked him to leave his wife and marry her, but he refused. She then asked to be allowed another lover, but this request was also turned down, and Sada ran away to Nagoya, where she began working as a waitress.

Meeting Kichizō Ishida

At the restaurant she met Gorō Ōmiya and fell in love with him but, knowing the owner would not tolerate a sexual relationship between a waitress and a customer, in June 1935 she decided to go to Tokyo.

Ōmiya, a professor and banker who hoped to become a member of parliament, joined her there and, after learning she had suffered from syphilis, paid for a cure at the Kusatsu hot springs. He also advised her to open a small restaurant to become independent, and to start as an apprentice. So, at the beginning of 1936, Sada went to work at the Yoshidaya restaurant in Nakano, owned by 42-year-old Kichizō Ishida.

Ishida, a known womaniser, soon began making advances. Sada gave in, and around mid-April their affair began. On 23 April they met at a teahouse, the equivalent of a motel. It was meant to be a quick encounter, instead they stayed in bed for days. They then moved to other inns, carrying on drinking and having sex, even while maids came into the room, and Ishida only returned to his restaurant on 8 May, after about two weeks.

Sada was completely in love with Ishida, and later said that with him she had finally felt true love. “It is hard to say exactly what was so good about him,” she said, “but it was impossible to say anything bad about his looks, his manner, the way he made love.”

After their encounter Sada became very jealous and could not bear the idea of her lover going back to his wife. She began drinking heavily and thinking about murder, which she committed soon after. She threatened to kill Ishida if he didn’t leave his wife, but he seemed more amused than frightened.

The murder

In an inn in the Ogu neighbourhood, during one of their sexual encounters, Ishida and Sada began strangling each other with the kimono cord, a game that heightened their pleasure. They kept it up for hours, until Ishida’s face stayed swollen and distorted. To ease the pain, the man took thirty tablets of a sedative.

According to Sada, as he was falling asleep Ishida told her: “You’ll put the cord around my neck and squeeze it again while I’m sleeping, won’t you? If you start, don’t stop, because afterwards it hurts too much.” At about 2 a.m. on 18 May, while he slept, Sada wrapped her sash twice around his neck and strangled him.

“After I had killed him I felt totally at ease, as though a heavy burden had been lifted,” she later told police.

She lay beside the body for a few hours, then with a knife cut off his penis and testicles and wrapped them in a magazine cover. With the blood she wrote “Sada and Kichi, the two of us alone” on Ishida’s left thigh and on the sheet, and carved the character of her name, 定, into his left arm. She put on his underwear and, at about 8 a.m., left the inn telling the staff not to disturb Ishida because he was sleeping.

Sada fled and the next day went shopping and to the cinema. Then she hid in an inn in Shinagawa under a false name, wrote farewell letters to Ishida, Ōmiya and a friend, and planned to take her own life a week later. Sada said Ishida’s genitals were her dearest memento of him.

Meanwhile the body had been found and the news was in every paper. The manhunt sparked what was called the “Abe Sada panic”: police received sightings from all over Japan, and a false sighting in Ginza almost caused a stampede.

On 20 May, at 4 p.m., police entered her room and arrested her. Asked why she had killed Ishida, Sada replied that she loved him so much she wanted him to be hers alone, and that if she killed him no other woman would ever touch him again.

The trial

The trial began on 25 November 1936. The case fascinated the public, and Sada told everything with great frankness, including her sex life. On 21 December she was convicted of murder and mutilation of a corpse. The prosecution had asked for ten years, and she herself said she wanted the death penalty, but she was sentenced to just six years in prison, served at Tochigi women’s penitentiary.

On 10 November 1940 her sentence was commuted thanks to an amnesty for the 2,600th anniversary of the mythical accession of Emperor Jimmu, and in 1941 Sada was released, after five years in prison.

Little is known of her life after her release. We know she changed her name and married, but her husband left her after discovering her true identity. She also wrote an autobiography. The last news we have of her dates to 1970, when she vanished without a trace.

Sada Abe became the subject of many novels, films and documentaries, the most famous being Nagisa Ōshima’s “In the Realm of the Senses”, from 1976.

Sources

• Wikipedia, Sada Abe