Abe Sada

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Abe Sada, ca.1935

Abe Sada ( Japanese 阿 部 定 ; * May 28, 1905 in Kanda , Tokyo city ; † after 1970) became known for the erotic asphyxiation ( strangulation ) of her lover Ishida Kichizō ( 石田 吉 蔵 ) on May 18, 1936, the subsequent cutting off of his Member and his testicles, which she then carried around in her handbag. In Japan this story became a national sensation with mythical overtones and was picked up by various artists, philosophers, writers and filmmakers.

Early life

Abe Sada was born in 1905, the seventh of eight children of Abe Shigeyoshi and Katsu, a family of middle-upper class tatami mat makers in the Kanda district of Tokyo. Of the four children who reached adulthood, Sada was the youngest. Her father is originally from Chiba Prefecture and was adopted by the Abe family to help and run their business. Her mother encouraged Sada to take singing and shamisen lessons, both activities that at the time were associated with geishas and prostitutes rather than artistic endeavors. Geishas were celebrated and Sada neglected the school for the lessons and wore appropriate make-up.

Her brother Shintarō was a womanizer and ran away with his parents' money after his marriage. Sada's sister Teruko had several lovers, which is why her father sent her to work in a brothel - a not uncommon punishment for prominent women at the time - but he soon brought her back. As the family problems grew for both of them, she was often sent out of the house alone, where she surrounded herself with equally independent youth. When she was 15, she was raped by one of her friends. As she became more and more uncontrollable, her parents sold her to a geisha house in Yokohama in 1922 , hoping to give her a place in society that would give her direction. Abe Toku, Sada's eldest sister, testified that Sada herself wished to become a geisha, while Sada said her father made her do it as a punishment for her promiscuity.

Abe's encounter with the geisha world was frustrating and disappointing. Becoming a star geisha required years of training in art and music from childhood. However, Abe became a lowly geisha whose main job was sex. She worked in this profession for five years until she contracted syphilis . Since this meant that from now on she would have to have regular examinations just like a licensed prostitute, she decided to switch to this better-paying profession.

Early 1930s

Taishōrō, her last job as a licensed prostitute

Abe started working as a prostitute in Ōsaka's famous Tobita red light district , where she caused trouble: she stole money from her clients and tried several times to leave the brothel , but was always tracked down by the well-organized legal prostitution system. After two years she managed to escape and started working as a waitress. Dissatisfied with her wages, she became a prostitute again in 1932, but this time without a license. When her mother died in January 1933, she traveled to Tokyo to visit a grave and engaged in prostitution there. A year later, in January 1934, her father also became terminally ill and she nursed him until his death.

In October 1934, Abe was arrested during a police search of an unlicensed brothel. Kasahara Kinnosuke ( 笠原 喜 之 助 ), a good friend of the brothel owner and an influential lobbyist for the Seiyūkai party , arranged for the women to be released. Since he was attracted to Abe and she had no debt, she became his lover. Kasahara provided them with a house and money on December 20, 1934. He later said under oath, “She was a really strong woman. Even though I'm quite jaded, she amazed me. She wasn't satisfied until we did it two, three or four times a night. It was unacceptable to her if I didn't touch her private parts all night. […] At first it was great, but after a couple of weeks I was a little exhausted. ”When Abe wanted him to leave his wife to marry her, he refused. Then she asked him to be allowed to find a lover, which he also refused. Their relationship ended and Abe fled to Nagoya in 1935 .

There she tried again to escape prostitution by serving as a waiter. She began a relationship with a customer of the restaurant, Ōmiya Gorō ( 大 宮 五郎 ), a professor and banker with ambitions for a seat in the Kokkai . Since her employer would not allow a relationship with a customer and bored of Nagoya, she moved back to Tokyo in June. Ōmiya met Abe there again and when he found out about her syphilis, he paid her for a cure in Kusatsu from November to January 1936. Ōmiya suggested that she become financially independent with a restaurant and recommended that she do an apprenticeship beforehand.

Acquaintance with Ishida Kichizo

On February 1, 1936, she began her apprenticeship at Yoshida-ya, which was founded in the 1920s by Ishida Kichizō in Tokyo's Nakano district . Ishida was a philanderer so the restaurant was mostly run by his wife. He made advances to her, and since Ōmiya did not satisfy her sexually, she gave in. On April 23, 1936, they met for a “short love affair” in a machiai , the counterpart of today's Love Hotels , in Shibuya , but then spent four days in bed there. On the night of April 27, 1936, they moved to another machiai for sex, partly in the presence of a singing geisha or the staff who refilled their drinks. After that, their love marathon continued in the Ogu district. Ishida did not return to his restaurant until the morning of May 8, 1936. Abe later said of him: “It's hard to say what I liked about him. But I can't say anything bad about his looks, his behavior, his ability as a lover, the way he expressed his feelings. I had never met such a sexy man before. "

After the split, Abe became jealous and started drinking. A week before the murder, she thought about the act. On May 9, 1936, she attended a play in which a geisha attacked her lover with a knife. Two days later, she pawned some of her belongings to buy sushi and a kitchen knife. Abe later described her next meeting with Ishida as follows: “I pulled the knife out of my pocket, threatened him as I had seen in the play and said, 'Kichi, you wore this kimono just to please a favorite customer. I'll kill you bastard for it. ' Ishida was startled and took a step back, but he seemed happy. "

"Abe Sada Incident"

Site of the "Abe Sada Incident"

Ishida and Abe returned to Ogu, where they stayed until his death. During their act of love, Abe put the knife on his penis and said she would make sure he was never unfaithful to her, which Ishida replied with a laugh. After two days of intercourse, Abe began to choke him, Ishida encouraged her to continue and choked her too. She used her obi for this on the evening of May 16 , and after repeating this for two hours, Ishida's face contorted without returning to normal. Abe used a sedative called calmotin to calm his pain. When Ishida was slowly passing out, he said, “You will put the belt around my neck again and tie it off when I sleep, won't you ...? When you start, don't stop because it's painful afterwards. "

At 2:00 am on the morning of May 18, she strangled him to death while he was sleeping. After lying next to his body for several hours, she severed his genitals with the kitchen knife, wrapped them in a magazine, and carried them with her until she was arrested three days later. With the blood she wrote Sada, Ishida no Kichi futari kiri ( 定 、 石田 の 吉 二人 キ リ , “Sada, Ishida Kichi together”) on Ishida's left thigh and the sheet and scratched her name on his left arm. After that, she put on his underwear, left the place at 8 a.m., and asked the staff not to disturb Ishida. When asked why she had severed his genitals, she replied, “Because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part with me that brought me the most vivid memories. "

Then she met with Ōmiya Gorō, apologized several times, assuming that it was about the fact that she had cheated on him, where she actually asked for forgiveness for having destroyed his political career, as with the reporting of the newspapers Should happen on May 19th.

"Abe Sada Panic"

“Abe Sada Panic” in the Tōkyō Asahi Shimbun on May 21, 1936

The story became a national sensation and the resulting hysteria was dubbed the "Abe Sada Panic". The police received reports of Abe sightings from various cities, which almost triggered a mass panic in Ginza and resulted in a major traffic jam. Referring to the February 26 Incident ( ni ni-roku jiken ), the crime was jokingly referred to as the "May 18 Incident" ( go ichi-hachi jiken ).

May 19th she passed like an ordinary day. On the 20th, she wrote farewell letters to Ōmiya, a friend, and Ishida in an inn in Shinagawa . She practiced necrophilia and planned to commit suicide on Mount Ikoma for the following week .

At four in the afternoon she received a visit from the police who suspected her pseudonym, with which she had registered at the inn. Abe introduced herself and convinced the doubting cops by showing them the genitals as evidence.

What sets this case apart from dozens of similar cases in Japan, William Johnston saw in the fact that she killed out of love, not jealousy. Mark Schreiber notes that the incident occurred at a time when the Japanese media were constantly reporting extreme political and military problems, such as the February 26 incident or the impending war against China . Such a sensationalistic sex scandal served as a welcome break from the disturbing events of the time. The incident also fitted in with the erotic-grotesque nonsense ( ero-guro nansensu ) popular style at the time, and the incident involving Abe Sada was to dominate this genre for years.

When the details of the crime were made public, rumors began to circulate about the limb's extraordinary size, but this was denied by a police officer and Abe. His penis and testicles were moved to the Pathology Museum of the Tokyo University Medical School , where they remained on display until after the end of World War II, but then disappeared.

Court ruling

Her trial began on November 25, 1936, and queues formed in front of the building by five o'clock in the morning. The judge stated that he was sexually aroused by some details, but made sure that the proceedings were carried out properly. Abe's pleading before the verdict began with, “What I regret most about this incident is that I am being misunderstood as some kind of sexual pervert… There has not been a man like Ishida in my life. There were men I liked and with whom I slept without asking for money, but none of them made me feel like I was facing him. "

On December 21, Abe was sentenced to 6 years imprisonment for conditional murder and desecration, although prosecutors asked for 10 years and Abe himself wanted the death penalty . She was taken to the Tochigi women's prison as inmate number 11. On November 10, 1940, on the occasion of the 2600th anniversary of the founding of the empire by the mythological Emperor Jimmu, she received a reduced sentence and was released exactly five years after the murder on May 17, 1941.

The police records of Abe's interrogation and her confession became a national bestseller in 1936. Christine L. Marran puts the fascination for Abe's story in the context of the dokufu stereotype ( 毒 婦 , “poison woman”), a transgressive female character type that appeared in serial novels and stage plays in Japan in the 1870s. In the course of this, confessing autobiographies of convicted women appeared in the late 1890s. In the early 1910s, such autobiographies took on an increasingly unapologetic tone, criticizing Japan and society. So wrote Kanno Suga , in 1911 because of high treason incident , a plot to assassinate Emperor Meiji , hanged was openly rebellious essays in prison. Kaneko Fumiko , who received the death penalty for her plot to bomb the imperial family , used her notoriety to speak out against the imperial system and the racism and paternalism it generated. Abe's confession has become the most popular tale by a convicted criminal in Japan. Marran points out that, unlike the previous similar autobiographers, Abe emphasized her sexuality and love for her victim.

Next life

After her release, Abe took on a pseudonym. As the lover of a "serious man," whom she referred to as Y in her memoir , she moved to Ibaraki Prefecture and then to Saitama Prefecture . When Y and those around him learned their true identity, their relationship broke up.

In order to divert public attention from the politics and criticism of the occupation authorities , the Yoshida government openly encouraged a policy of the 3 "S" - "Sport, Screen, Sex". This marked a departure from strict pre-war censorship of obscene or immoral material and resulted in a change in the literature on Abe. Pre-war writings such as Abe Sada no seishin bunseki teki shindan (“ Psychoanalytic Diagnosis of Abe Sada”) from 1937 presented Abe as an example of unbridled female sexuality and its danger to the patriarchal system. In the post-war period she was treated as a critic of totalitarianism and a symbol of the Freedom from oppressive political ideologies. Abe became a popular subject in high and popular literature. The buraiha -Schriftsteller Sakunosuke Oda wrote two stories based on Abe, and an article from the June 1949 noted that Abe was trying to clean its name after mountains of erotic books published about them.

In 1946, the writer Sakaguchi interviewed Ango Abe and treated her as an authority on sexuality and freedom. Sakaguchi described Abe as a "gentle, warm figure of salvation for future generations". In 1947 O-Sada Iro Zange ("Sada's erotic confession") became a national bestseller with over 100,000 copies sold. The book was written in interview form, but was based on the interrogation protocols. Abe then sued the author Kimura Ichirō for defamation and defamation, which probably ended with a settlement before the court. In response, she wrote her autobiography Abe Sada Shuki ("Notes of Abe Sada"), in which, in contrast to Kimura's portrayal of herself as a pervert, she emphasized her love for Ishida. The first issue of Jitsuwa magazine ( 実 話 ) in January 1948 contained previously unpublished photos of the incident with the headline “Ero-guro of the Century! Initial release. Illustration of the Abe Sada Incident. ”Looking back at the varied portrayals of Abe Sada, the June 1949 edition of the Monthly Reader described her as a“ heroine of that time ”because of her own desires in a time of“ false morality ”and oppression followed.

Abe capitalized on their fame by being interviewed by a popular magazine and for several years in a traveling stage production called Shōwa Ichidai Onna ( 昭和 一代 女 , "a woman of the Shōwa generation ") appeared. In 1952 she began to wait at the Hoshikikusui workers' pub in Inarichō, Shitaya in central Tokyo for 20 years, where she was also recognized as a model employee by the local restaurant association. The film critic Donald Richie visited the Hoshikikusui several times in the 60s and described in his book Japanese Portraits how Abe approached a noisy group of drinkers dramatically: She descended a long flight of stairs and fixed individuals. The men in the pub then covered their crotch with their hands and shouted things like "Hide the knives!" And "I'm afraid to go to the loo." Whereupon she hit the railing, staring at the group until there was an uncomfortable silence. and then started serving. 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. " ("... after all, she had strangled a man to death and then cut off his member. You shuddered every time Abe Sada slapped you on the back with her hand.")

In 1969 Abe had a guest appearance in the section Abe Sada Jiken of the dramatic documentary Meiji, Taishō, Shōwa: Ryōki Onna Hanzaishi by director Ishii Teruo , and the last known photograph of her is also from August of that year. In 1970 it disappeared from the public. When the film In the Realm of the Senses was planned in the mid-1970s, director Oshima Nagisa found her after a successful search with her hair shorn in a nunnery in Kansai .

heritage

Decades after the incident and her withdrawal, she continued to attract public interest. In addition to the documentary, in which she appeared before her retirement from the public, three successful film adaptations of the story appeared. In addition, the 1983 Nikkatsu - Roman porno Sexy Doll: Abe Sada Sansei ( セ ク シ ー ド ー ル 阿 部 定 ３ 世 , Eng. "Sexy Doll: Abe Sada III.") Used her name in the title. A 438-page biography appeared in Japan in 1998, and William Johnston wrote the first English-language book about her under the title Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star. A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan , published in 2005.

In 2003, the Mainichi Shimbun reported on Makise Akane, a stripper who produced penis-shaped dolls called Chinkichi - a suitcase word composed of Japanese slang for penis on the one hand and Kichi for Kichizō Ishida on the other. In March 2007, a four-piece Noise band from Perth, Australia named Abe Sada won a music grant from the Department of Culture and the Arts of Western Australia to tour Japan between June and July 2007.

In literature (selection)

  • Abe Sada: Abe Sada shuki ( 阿 部 定 手記 ). Shimbashi Shobo, Tokyo 1948.
  • Funabashi Seiichi : Abe Sada gyōjōki ( 阿 部 定 行 状 記 ). August 1947
  • Kimura Ichirō: O-Sada iro pliers ( お 定 色 ざ ん げ ). 1947
  • Fuyuki Takeshi: Aiyoku ni nakinureta onna. Abe Sada no tadotta hansei ( 愛欲 に 泣 き ぬ れ る 女 - あ べ さ だ の 辿 つ た 半生 ). March 1947
  • Nagata Mikihiko: Jitsuroku: Abe Sada or Jōen ichidai onna . Serialized novel, September 1950 – August 1951.
  • Oda Sakunosuke : Sesō ( 世 相 ). 1946, short story.
  • Oda Sakunosuke: Yōfu ( 妖婦 ). 1947, short story.
  • Satō Makoto: Abe Sada no inu ( 阿 部 定 の 犬 ). 1975.
  • Sekine Hiroshi: Abe Sada . 1971. poem.
  • Tōkyō Seishin Bunsekigaku Kenkyōjo: Abe Sada no seishin bunseki teki shindan ( 阿 部 定 の 精神 分析 的 診断 ). 1937.
  • Watanabe Jun'ichi : Shitsurakuen ( 失 楽 園 ). 1997. Novel based on the incident.

In the movie

Her life has been filmed four times:

Web links

Commons : Abe Sada  - collection of images, videos and audio files

swell

  • Yuki Allyson Honjo: The Cruelest Cut. www.japanreview.net, accessed July 24, 2007 (Review by William Johnston: Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star ).
  • William Johnston: Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star. A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan . Columbia University Press, New York 2005, ISBN 0-231-13052-X .
  • Christine Marran: Poison Woman. Figuring Female Transgression in Modern Japanese Culture . University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis 2007, ISBN 0-8166-4727-5 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Donald Richie: Japanese Portraits . Tuttle Publishing, Tokyo 2006, ISBN 0-8048-3772-4 , Sada Abe, p. 33-35 .
  • Mark Schreiber: The Dark Side. Infamous Japanese Crimes and Criminals . Kodansha, Tokyo 2001, ISBN 4-7700-2806-7 , O-Sada Serves a Grateful Nation, pp. 184-190 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Johnston, p. 25.
  2. ^ Bill Thompson: Magill's Survey of Cinema. Foreign Language Films . Ed .: Frank N. Magill. Volume 4. Salem Press, Englewood Cliffs 1985, ISBN 0-89356-247-5 , Jitsuroko [sic] Abe Sada, pp. 1570 .
  3. ↑ a b c Johnston, p. 20.
  4. ↑ Johnston, pp. 21-25.
  5. ↑ Johnston, pp. 26-27.
  6. ↑ a b c d e f g h i Yuki Allyson: The Cruelest Cut. (No longer available online.) Www.japanreview.net, archived from the original on January 19, 2011 ; accessed on July 24, 2007 .
  7. ↑ Johnston, p. 37.
  8. ↑ Johnston, pp. 21, 171.
  9. ↑ Johnston, p. 44.
  10. ^ Johnston: Notes from the Police Interrogation of Abe Sada , p. 169. “While we were playing around on the second floor he forced himself into me.”
  11. ↑ Johnston, p. 45. “… in the summer of my fifteenth year because I was raped by a student at a friend's house…”
  12. ^ Johnston, p. 58.
  13. ↑ Schreiber, p. 187.
  14. ^ Johnston, p. 57.
  15. ↑ Johnston, pp. 66-67.
  16. ↑ Johnston, pp. 67-71.
  17. ↑ Johnston, pp. 72-77.
  18. ↑ Affidavit by Kasahara Kinnosuke in Johnston, pp. 165–166. “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. "
  19. ↑ Johnston, pp. 126-127.
  20. ↑ Johnston, pp. 78-83.
  21. ↑ a b Johnston, p. 11.
  22. ↑ Schreiber, pp. 184-185.
  23. ↑ a b c Schreiber, p. 184.
  24. ↑ Schreiber, p. 185.
  25. ↑ Johnston, pp. 84-94.
  26. ^ Johnston, pp. 92, 193. “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. "
  27. ↑ Johnston, pp. 95-99, 192-194. “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 ... ”
  28. ↑ Johnston, pp. 99-102, 164-165. "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."
  29. ↑ Johnston, pp. 102-103, 200-201, 206.
  30. ↑ a b Schreiber, p. 186.
  31. ↑ Johnston, p. 103. “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. "
  32. ↑ Johnston, pp. 105-108.
  33. ^ Johnston, p. 111. “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… 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. "
  34. ↑ Schreiber, pp. 186-187.
  35. ↑ In the book 19-nin no Abe Sada ("19 Abe Sadas") from 1981 similar cases are presented in detail. Writer: O-Sada Serves a Grateful Nation mentions at least 53 cases of women severing male genitals since Abe's case.
  36. ^ Johnston, p. 119.
  37. ↑ Johnston, pp. 11, 114, 160.
  38. ↑ Johnston, p. 124. “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. '”
  39. ↑ a b c d Schreiber, p. 190.
  40. ↑ a b Schreiber, p. 188.
  41. ↑ Schreiber, pp. 188-189. “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. "
  42. ↑ a b c d Schreiber, p. 189.
  43. ^ Johnston, p. 147.
  44. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. Xiii – xiv.
  45. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. 66-67.
  46. ↑ Marran 2007, p. 103.
  47. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. 103-104.
  48. ↑ Marran 2007, p. 104.
  49. ↑ Johnston, pp. 148-150.
  50. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. 137-138.
  51. ↑ Marran 2007, p. 136, 140.
  52. ↑ Marran 2007, p. 143.
  53. ↑ a b Marran 2007, pp. 140-141.
  54. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. 142-143. "Tender, warm figure of salvation for future generations"
  55. ^ Johnston, p. 160.
  56. ↑ Johnston, pp. 152-153.
  57. ^ Johnston, p. 153.
  58. ↑ Richie, pp. 33-35.
  59. ↑ a b 明治 大 正 昭和 猟 奇 女 犯罪 史 . In: Japanese Movie Database. Retrieved October 17, 2010 (Japanese).
  60. ↑ Toshihiko Tawaraya: SADA ABE 阿 部 定 . In: Cybar ANEMONE. Retrieved October 17, 2010 (Japanese, picture of 64-year-old Abe Sada next to a dancer, 1969.).
  61. ↑ Donald Richie: Japanese Portraits . Tuttle Publishing, Tokyo 2006, ISBN 0-8048-3772-4 , Eiko Matsuda, p. 37 .
  62. ↑ Abe Sada in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  63. ↑ http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news/2003/06/20030622p2g00m0dm999000c.html straight-dead link | url = http: //mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai /archive/news/2003/06/20030622p2g00m0dm999000c.html | date = 2018-08 | archivebot = 2018-08-21 20:37:49 InternetArchiveBot}} (link not available)
  64. ^ Contemporary Music Grant Results ( August 29, 2007 memento in the Internet Archive ) Department of Culture and the Arts, Government of Western Australia, accessed December 16, 2012.
  65. ↑ Marran 2007, pp. 161-163.
  66. ↑ 平 成 版 安 部 定 あ ん た が 欲 し い ヘ イ セ イ バ ン ア ベ サ ダ ア ン タ ガ ホ シ イ ( Memento from March 22, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Abe is the family name, Sada the first name.
personal data
SURNAME Abe, Sada
ALTERNATIVE NAMES 阿 部 定 (Japanese)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION japanese murderess
DATE OF BIRTH May 28, 1905
PLACE OF BIRTH Kanda , Tokyo city
DATE OF DEATH after 1970