Episode #13: Abe Sada, Part 2 (Show Notes)

A newspaper piece regarding Abe’s crime;
Kichizo is pictured, too

Before Abe connived to murder her lover, Kichizo Ishida theirs was just your run of the mill “married supervisor embarks on love affair with comely employee” story. Roughly two months after meeting, the couple absconded for a prolonged tryst. The money ran out two weeks later. Kichizo returned home; Abe stayed with friends. During the separation, Abe became noticeably agitated. After seeing a play during which a geisha attacks her lover using a knife, she hatched a plan.

When Abe and Kichizo next met-up, she brought a knife. Although she threatened him, Kichizo wasn't alarmed. Later during the multi-day rendezvous, the duo began trying-out erotic asphyxiation. After coiling a sash too firmly around Kichizo’s neck, his face became twisted. While he lay unconscious from sedatives employed to relieve the discomfort, she choked him to death. Before fleeing, Abe cut-off his genitals.

Taken at Tokyo’s Takanawa Police Station on
May 20, 1936, shortly following Abe’s capture

Following a three-day manhunt, Abe was captured; she promptly came clean. Having professed guilt, her trial concentrated largely on Abe’s punishment. The solely male tribunal deciding her case, concluded that suffering from a combination of hysteria, nymphomania, sadism, and fetishism, she hadn't been in total control of her mental faculties. She categorically refuted these pronouncements, and continually maintained her crime was perpetrated because of love. Regardless, she was condemned to just six years in prison. 

Abe, July 26, 1951

Upon release, Abe fought to carve-out a new life while still haunted by her notorious crime. She vanished from public view in 1970. During Abe’s lifetime, she was considered living proof of the hazards of female sexuality. Even today, her name’s redolent of the extreme nature of women’s sensuality. Conversely, many esteem her for revolting against the patriarchy, too.

Curious about Abe’s transformed from debauched murderess to contemporary feminist icon, then check-out this History Bitch approved biography: