The Teahouse Killing: Sada Abe's Twisted Love Story

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Tokyo, May 1936.

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Gaysha walks into a police station carrying something carefully wrapped in silk inside her

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kimono sleeve.

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When detectives ask what she's hiding, she produces the severed penis of her dead lover.

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For three days, she's been wandering the streets, going to movies, staying in hotels, and

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treating this body part like it's the man himself.

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Her name is Sada Abe.

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And her crime is one of the most talked about cases in Japanese crime history.

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[Music]

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So there's this moment in May 1936 where Tokyo police are dealing with full blown mass

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hysteria.

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Rumors are flying that a mad woman is loose in the Ginza district, hunting men with a kitchen

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knife.

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Women and kimonos are getting stopped on the street.

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Everyone's genuinely terrified.

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The newspapers are running wild with speculation.

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The reality?

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The woman they're searching for is sitting in movie theaters watching romantic films.

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She's browsing shops.

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She's checking into hotels and sleeping peacefully.

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And yes, she's carrying her dead lover's severed genitals in her purse, but she's treating

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them with the tenderness that you'd show a photograph of someone you lost.

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Her name is Sada Abe.

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Understanding how she ended up here means going back to a summer day when she was 15.

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Tokyo in 1920 looks different from what you're probably thinking.

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Sada grows up in the condo neighborhood, the working class heart of the city.

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Her family makes tatami mats for a living.

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She's the seventh of eight kids.

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Her mother has artistic ambitions that don't match their social class, so she encourages Sada

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to learn shamisen and singing.

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These skills could either refine you or mark you for the sex trade, depending entirely on

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which direction life pushes you.

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Then once summer afternoon, she's at a friend's house when a university student forces himself

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on her.

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Her violation determines everything that follows.

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For Genoty in 1920s Japan is currency.

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It's a daughter's value to her family.

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Once you lose it, especially through rape, you're considered permanently damaged.

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Her family doesn't pursue justice.

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They don't comfort or protect her.

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They treat her like she's the problem.

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She gets ostracized, labeled as corrupted, told she's unmarriageable.

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The message becomes clear, you brought shame to this household.

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Sada absorbs this completely.

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If society declares her a prostitute for something done to her against her will, she'll

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become exactly that.

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She enters the Gaysha world, except she's starting way too late to become one of those

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highly trained artists.

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She ends up working as what they politely call a pillow Gaysha, which means high-end

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prostitute.

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She's moving through establishments where entertainment and sex work are the same thing.

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Then she contracts syphilis.

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Before antibiotics, this diagnosis is catastrophic.

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The treatments involve arsenic injections and mercury compounds.

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You're subjected to mandatory police examinations because the government regulates license prostitution.

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To escape that humiliation, Sada starts working unlicensed, bouncing between cities as a waitress

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or maid, whatever keeps her name off official registers.

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By 1936, she's 31.

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In the pleasure quarters, that makes her ancient.

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She's been ground down by the system for over a decade, scarred by disease and hardened

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by hundreds of transactional encounters.

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The man she meets is named Kichizo Ishida.

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He owns a successful restaurant in Tokyo.

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He's married with children, respected in his community.

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He's also a regular patron of the pleasure districts.

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Someone who believes his wealth entitles him to women's bodies as entertainment.

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When he meets Sada, something shifts.

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Most Gaysha's perform submission as part of the service.

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Sada doesn't do any of that.

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She's sexually forward, possessive, completely uninterested in the usual performance.

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For someone bored with scripted interactions, she's becoming fascinating.

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Her relationship unfolds mostly inside a tea house, built specifically for secret affairs.

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They're tucked into quiet residential areas offering privacy.

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Inside these spaces, the outside world vanishes.

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No family responsibilities, no economic pressures.

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There's nothing except two people and whatever they're building together.

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They start spending entire days locked in these rooms.

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Heavy drinking.

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Marathon sexual encounters.

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At some point, they introduce strangulation into their intimacy.

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This part matters.

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She's not forcing this on him.

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According to trial records and her testimony, he actively wants this.

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He finds pleasure in being choked during sex and how oxygen deprivation intensifies sensation.

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She uses her obi sash or accord, tightening in around his throats until he's hovering

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at the edge of unconsciousness before releasing.

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Versata, this becomes transformative.

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Her entire adult life has been about being used, being controlled.

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But holding his breath in her hands, that's absolute power.

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She decides whether he lives or dies.

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According to her statements, he tells her, quote, "It feels so good you might as well

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kill me."

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So, on May 18th, 1936, she does.

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They're staying at a tea house in the Ogu neighborhood.

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They've been there for several days straight.

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On the morning of May 18th, while he's sleeping, Sada wraps her sash around his neck one more

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time.

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This time, she doesn't release it.

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There's no struggle, no knocked over furniture.

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It's quiet and intimate, the natural conclusion to everything they've been doing.

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What happens next defines the case.

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She takes a knife and severs his genitals completely.

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And police ask her why, her answer is disturbingly rational.

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Quote, "I couldn't take his head or body with me.

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I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories.

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In her mind, she's not destroying him, she's preserving him.

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She can't carry his whole body, so she takes the part that represents their sexual connection.

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A dead, castrated man can never return to his wife.

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He could never sleep with another gaysia.

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He belongs to her forever.

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Before leaving, she uses his blood as ink.

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She writes on the bedsheets, "Sada Kichi, the two of us forever."

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She carves her name into his thigh.

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Then she walks out and disappears into Tokyo.

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Over the next three days, Sada wanders the city in what witnesses describe as a "serene

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calm."

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She has the severed genitals wrapped in oil paper and cloth tucked inside her kimono sleeve.

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According to testimony, she speaks to them like they're him, maintaining conversations with

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the body parts as though her lover is still present.

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She buys tickets to romantic movies.

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She stays in different hotels.

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She goes shopping.

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She's living inside a private reality where her lover remains with her.

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Meanwhile, Tokyo descends into chaos.

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The body has been discovered.

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The newspapers are exploding with coverage because every detail fits the erotic grotesque sensibility

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dominating 1930s Japanese media.

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Rumors multiply.

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Every woman in traditional dress becomes a potential suspect.

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On May 20th, police track her to an inn in Takanawa.

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When detectives enter, they don't encounter someone trying to escape.

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She's simply waiting.

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They ask for evidence.

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She calmly unwraps the bundle and produces the genitals.

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Multiple officers describe her demeanor as "radient" or "peaceful."

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She doesn't resist.

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The police interrogation creates transcripts known underground as "the glossy record."

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The interrogators press for explicit sexual details.

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Specific positions.

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Frequency.

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The exact mechanics of the strangulation.

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The state apparatus supposed to enforce public morality transforms into a consumer of pornography.

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Sada answers everything directly.

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She's articulate and unashamed.

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She refuses to classify what she did as murder in any traditional sense.

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To her, this was a preservation.

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Love extended to its absolute extreme.

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The trial brings in psychiatrists who diagnose her with hysteria and nymphomania.

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Catch all labels for women who don't conform.

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They examine her menstrual cycle.

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Investigate her family for signs of moral degeneracy.

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The verdict surprises everyone.

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Six years for second degree murder and mutilation of a corpse.

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The leniency comes from the court recognizing elements of a traditional love suicide.

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In Japanese culture, survivors of suicide packs often get treated as tragic figures.

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There's also strange public sympathy building around her.

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In a society built on arranged, passionless marriages, her crime reads like an absolute devotion

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taken to its conclusion.

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She's released in 1941, freed as part of a general amnesty.

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She walks out into a Japan transformed by war.

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After World War II ends, Sada re-emerges as a celebrity.

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She publishes an autobiography in 1948.

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Then she stars in a traveling stage play where she performs as herself, re-enacting a sanitized

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version of her crime.

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Theaters fill with audiences paying to watch the actual murderer act out her story.

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This comment on the eerie authenticity of her performance.

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By the 1950s, she opens a bar in Tokyo.

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Riders and artists treat it like a destination.

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You can have sake poured by the woman who severed a penis and carried it through the city for

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three days.

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She becomes a living artifact.

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Then in 1970, she vanishes.

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She closes the bar and cuts all contact.

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Theories spread.

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Suicide.

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A Buddhist Convent.

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Quiet death somewhere unnamed.

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But there's one final chapter.

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Around 1992, she's reportedly located by Isse Sagawa.

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The infamous Kobe Cannibal, who murdered and consumed a student in Paris, then got deported

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and released on a technicality.

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He finds her in a nursing home.

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She's 87.

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Sada Abe died shortly after.

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There's no confirmed death certificates, no public grave.

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She exited the world as a ghost.

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The same way she spent those three days after the murder.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories.

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My name is Joe.

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I'm the host, and here's an email subject case selection.

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Hi, Joe.

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How do you decide which case is to cover?

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Listener suggestions, personal interest, or something else?

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Omar in Flagstaff, Arizona.

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And Omar, thanks for the email, and I'll tell you what, it's 99% listener suggestions.

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Every once in a while, I'll come across a case, and I'll think, "Oh, well, no one's requested

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I do this, but it does sound super interesting."

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And I cover that case.

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And I'll tell you why I do it this way.

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Early on in the podcast, I was coming up with all the cases myself, obviously because

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not that many people were listening right off the bat.

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It took some time to build an audience, so I'm coming up with the cases myself.

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And then when people slowly started requesting that I cover cases, the more the podcast picked

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up, I was like, "Oh, this might be the key.

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I might be a dumb dumb," and when it comes to picking cases.

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So I'll take myself out of that equation, and I did that.

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I just exclusively just about covered only listener suggested cases.

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And that's what I've been doing ever since.

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So if you hear one, including the one today, nine times at a 10, it was a listener requested

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case.

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Hey, if you're a brand new listener to this podcast, make sure you hit subscribe wherever

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you are listening right now.

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Also go to 10minuteMurder.com, all kinds of things there.

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You can sign up for the newsletter and send me an email like Omar did.

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Request a case.

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Actually, you can do that on the website, 10minuteMurder.com.

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OG listeners, I love you.

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Keep sharing this podcast with your friends and with your family.

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Also keep in touch with me.

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I enjoy that.

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I like hearing what you think about different cases that we've covered here in the podcast.

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And I say we, because I include you in that as well.

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If you're an OG listener, I consider you part of this podcast.

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You've helped me build this thing.

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So yeah, keep on with the feedback.

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I really do enjoy that.

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And that's going to do it.

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That's your episode for today.

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Thanks again for listening to 10minuteMurder.

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See you next time.

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[Music]