SADA ABE: Japan’s Showa Sex Scandal

Sada Abe, born in Kanda in 1905, started life comfortably as the child of a wealthy tatami maker. By 31 years old, she was the most notorious woman in Japan and at the center of a murderous sex scandal that shocked the public.

Abe spent most of her teenage years on the streets where she fell in with a rough crowd. She was sold to a geisha house at 14 as a punishment for her ‘promiscuity’. Entering the geisha world late, she was stuck in lower ranks and soon left to pursue better pay as a prostitute. She worked in brothels across the country until she settled back in Tokyo in 1936.

She found work at a restaurant in Nakano. The owner, a 42-year-old married man named Kichizo Ishida, was a known womanizer. The two were mutually attracted and, in April 1936, slept together accompanied by a ballad from a geisha. The pair then spent a consecutive 2 weeks having sex at 3 different teahouses (the 1930s equivalent of a love hotel) across Tokyo.

After their tryst, Abe couldn’t bear the thought of Ishida returning to his wife and began to plan his murder, selling clothes to buy a kitchen knife.

The next time they met, Abe used her kimono sash to choke Ishida during sex. On the 2nd night, Ishida said, “If you strangle me, don't stop. It’s so painful after," and Abe was unsure of whether he was serious.

While Ishida slept that night, Abe wrapped her sash around his neck and strangled him to death. She lay with the body for hours before severing his penis and testicles and carrying them in her kimono. Using Ishida’s blood, she wrote “We, Sada and Kichi Ishida, are alone” on his thigh.

Over the next 3 days, Abe engaged in necrophilia with her souvenirs and planned to jump to her death from Mount Ikoma. Before she could, the police found her at a hotel where she calmy answered the door and presented the severed penis as proof of identity.

Despite demanding the death penalty, Abe was sentenced to only six years and lived out the rest of her life under an alias. One of the last sightings of her was by director Nagisa Oshima while he made a film based on Abe in the mid 70s. Tracking her down, he found her in a Kansai nunnery with her hair completely shorn.