14. A Weird – and Painful – End to a Passionate Affair
Finally, Kichizo Ishida fell asleep, at which point Sada Abe gathered her nerve one more time. She strangled her sleeping lover to death with a Geisha scarf. Then she took out the knife and castrated him, carved her name on his arm, and with his blood wrote “Sada and Kichizo together” on the bed sheets before she fled. Ishida’s body was discovered the next day, and when news of the murder and mutilation broke, pandemonium ensued. Word that a “sexually and criminally dangerous woman was on the loose” plunged Japan into what became known as “Sada Abe panic”.
Police eventually caught up with and arrested Sada, at which point they discovered Ishida’s genitals in her purse. When questioned why she was running around with Ishida’s private appendages, Sada 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“. Sada Abe was tried and convicted, and served five years in prison before she was released. She went on to write an autobiography, and lived until 1971. The Ishida-Abe love affair and its painfully weird conclusion became a sensation in Japan, embedded in its popular culture to this day.
