Sada Abe and Kichizō Ishida met for a fling in 1936 and ended up with something much more.
Planning only for a short fling, the couple instead remained in bed for four days. On the night of April 27, they moved to another teahouse in the distant neighborhood of Futako Tamagawa where they continued to drink and have sex, occasionally with the accompaniment of a geisha's singing, and would continue even as maids entered the room to serve sake. They next moved to the Ogu neighborhood.
Sada was so taken with him she became violently jealous.
After their two-week encounter ended, Abe became agitated and began drinking excessively. She said that with Ishida she had come to know true love for the first time in her life, and the thought of Ishida being back with his wife made her intensely jealous. Just over a week before Ishida's eventual death, Abe began to contemplate his murder.
She threatened him multiple times, and he was excited by it.
Sada Abe said: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…
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.
Their sex got more intense after 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 to cut off Ishida's breathing during orgasm, and they both enjoyed it. They repeated this for two more hours.
Ishida joked about her killing him.
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 afterwards." Abe commented that she wondered if he had wanted her to kill him, but on reflection decided he must have been joking.
After he fell asleep, Sada did it.
At about 2 am on May 18, 1936, as Ishida was asleep, Abe wrapped her sash twice around his neck and strangled him to death.
Sada Abe said: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 penis and testicles with the kitchen knife, wrapped them in a magazine cover, and kept them until her arrest three days later. With the blood she wrote "We, Sada and Ishida, are alone" on Ishida's left thigh, and on a bed sheet. She then carved "Sada" into his left arm. After putting on Ishida's underwear, she left the inn at about 8 am, 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."
Why did she do it?
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…"
She had killed not out of jealousy but out of love.
How she looked back on him.
Sada Abe 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.
I find this story kind of beautiful. They were both craving something they couldn't find anywhere else in their lives. They found it in each other, and clung to it for all they were worth. They couldn't let go of each other for weeks straight. He died in that state of happiness. That it happened in highly conformist Japan makes it even more impressive she was willing to step so far outside the norm.
It's kind of sad she had to live without him for the rest of her life. But, at least for a while, they had each other.
I'd be very interested to learn about other historical cases.
