On May 18, 1936, in Tokyo, a woman named Sada Abe strangled her lover and then mutilated his body. The case shocked Japan and became one of the most sensational criminal stories of the early 20th century.
Sada Abe was born on May 28, 1905, in the Kanda district of Tokyo. She was the seventh of eight children born to her parents, Shigeoshi and Katsu. Only four of the eight children survived infancy, making Sada the youngest in the family.
Her childhood was generally happy. Encouraged by her mother, she took singing lessons and learned to play the shamisen. At the time, this activity was considered something done by the lower classes, and people were surprised that her parents allowed their youngest daughter to participate.
At age 15, Sada’s life changed suddenly. She began spending time outside her home, and her parents grew concerned about the young people she was associating with. Their worries proved justified when Sada was assaulted by one of the boys in her crowd.
The assault had a profound effect on her. Despite her family’s support, she became distant and began misbehaving. She wore makeup and no longer obeyed her father.
In Japanese society at the time, men were considered the head of the family, but things were changing. By 1920, when Sada was 15, women accounted for over 60 percent of the Japanese industrial workforce. Sada, however, was becoming a badly behaved teenager.
In an attempt to get her life back on track, her parents sent her to work in a geisha house in Yokohama. She was 17 years old by then. Becoming a geisha at this age proved problematic.
Many of the girls she worked with had been brought up entirely within the geisha structure. Others had begun their training in their early teens. Sada was never considered a genuine geisha by the other girls. Instead, they viewed her more like a prostitute.
She had benefited from a far better education than her counterparts and knew more about the world. This made her popular with many clients.
After four years working in the geisha house, she contracted syphilis in 1925. The disease could be controlled but not cured, meaning she would now have to undergo regular examinations. This was something geisha girls did not have to do, unlike legally sanctioned prostitutes.
Sada decided that if she was going to be treated like a prostitute, she would be better off leaving the geisha house and working in one of the many brothels in the city. Working in these establishments came with dangers. Young women in geisha houses were protected by the reputation and customs of the institution. Now that Sada was working outside the geisha house, there was little control over her clients.
She soon realized she needed to find a different career. In 1932, her mother died, and she returned to Tokyo. Instead of seeking regular employment, she continued working in the industry she had become accustomed to.
In late 1933, her father became ill. She looked after him until his death in January 1934. Some wondered why she did this, given that she had been sent away as a teenager. But Sada was a dutiful daughter and nursed her father to the end.
Following her father’s death, she continued working as a prostitute. She was eventually arrested for being unlicensed. Her bail was paid by a client who then paid her to be his mistress. He gave her money and a place to live, but he was married and had no plans to leave his wife.
Sada was determined to make a better life for herself. She left Tokyo and went to live 265 kilometers away in the city of Nagoya. By now it was 1936, and she was 31 years old.
She found employment in a restaurant, where she met a professor named Goro Omiya. The two started a relationship but kept it secret, as Goro had political ambitions. A relationship with Sada would not help his career.
He did want to help her, though. He encouraged her to take control of her finances and helped her obtain a training position in a small but successful restaurant back in Tokyo.
The restaurant was founded by a successful businessman named Kichizo Ishida. He was 40 years old and had started the restaurant 16 years earlier. By 1936, it had gained an excellent reputation and was frequented by many high-society Tokyo residents.
Kichizo had a reputation as a ladies’ man. Soon after Sada started working at the restaurant, the two began a relationship. It was intense, and Kichizo would take his new woman away for weekends while leaving the running of his business to his wife.
Sada soon became obsessed with him and began drinking. She realized he would not leave his wife and that their intense relationship would one day end.
She went to a Japanese theatre and saw a play about a geisha girl who threatened her lover with a knife. Fascinated by the play, she went to a local shop and purchased a large kitchen knife.
The next time she saw Kichizo, she threatened him with it, much like the geisha girl in the play. Instead of being concerned by her strange behavior, he found it amusing and arranged for them to spend a weekend away together.
On the morning of May 18, after spending two nights in a hotel, something came over Sada. While her lover was asleep, she reached over and strangled him. She did not stop until she realized he was dead.
What happened next was bizarre. Sada took the knife and cut off her lover’s genitals. She wrapped them in paper and put them in the pocket of her dress. She wrote their names on the bedsheets with blood and carved her name into his left arm.
She then calmly left the hotel. Later that morning, a maid entered the room and discovered the mutilated body. The police were informed, and the hunt for Sada Abe began.
The press reported the story quickly and in detail. News of the events of May 18, 1936, soon reached people all over the country. There were many alleged sightings of her, but they all turned out to be false.
Sada was staying in a small Tokyo hotel room. She had checked in under an assumed name and spent the next few days writing goodbye letters to friends and family. She planned to end her life by traveling to Osaka and jumping from Mount Koma.
On Wednesday, May 20, the police found her. She was still in the hotel room in the Shinagawa district. They arrested her and escorted her to the police station.
The press, still fascinated with the story, began digging into her past. Soon the name Goro Omiya started appearing in newspapers, which destroyed his political ambitions.
At the station, Sada was questioned by officers, who were surprised by her calm manner. She explained that because Kichizo was married, she knew she could never be with him. But she could not stand thinking of him being with another woman.
She thought that if she killed him, he would never be embraced by anyone else again. She would have been the last woman to be intimate with him.
The press continued reporting the story, and all of Japan became gripped by the case. Radio had been popular in Japan since the mid-1920s, and the number of households owning a radio had increased year after year. Families would sit together and listen to their favorite shows and the news, which constantly updated the story of Sada Abe.
Strangely, instead of being portrayed as a killer, Sada was treated like a celebrity. It was reported that she killed out of love, not jealousy.
The trial of Sada Abe began on November 25, 1936. Large crowds gathered outside the courthouse. She pleaded guilty, knowing the crime carried a maximum sentence of death. She described her life and the events that led up to the fateful morning of May 18, 1936.
The court acknowledged her diminished mental state. On December 21, she was convicted of murder in the second degree and of mutilating a corpse. The judge sentenced her to six years in prison.
She was taken to the Tochigi Women’s Penitentiary, where she proved to be a model prisoner. Due to her good behavior, she was released on November 10, 1940.
Upon release, Sada lived under an alias. At first, she lived with her sister and brother-in-law before moving on to work as a maid. She was forced to leave that position when her true identity was revealed.
She met another man and went to live with him for a few years. Again, when her real name was disclosed, she was forced to break off the relationship.
Sada realized it would be extremely difficult to live without being recognized. She decided to embrace her notoriety.
At the end of the Second World War, social morals and culture began to change in Japan. In 1946, Japanese women finally received the vote. Sada was suddenly seen in a different light. No longer was she just the young woman who had strangled her lover. She was now seen as a woman who had been the victim of men who had exploited and taken advantage of her throughout her life.
In the subsequent years, books and plays were written about her, including one written by Sada herself. She was by now famous in her country and went on book tours and appeared on stage.
In 1970, Sada disappeared from public life. What became of her is unknown. It is claimed that film director Nagisa Oshima managed to track her down to the Kansai countryside, where she decided to see out her remaining years in a Buddhist nunnery. This, however, has never been substantiated.
Her final years and the date of her death remain a mystery.