The Teahouse Killing: Sada Abe's Twisted Love Story

0:00 Tokyo, May 1936. Gaysha walks into a police station carrying something carefully wrapped in silk inside her kimono sleeve. When detectives ask what she's hiding, she produces the severed penis of her dead lover. For three days, she's been wandering the streets, going to movies, staying in hotels, and treating this body part like it's the man himself. Her name is Sada Abe. And her crime is one of the most talked about cases in Japanese crime history. [Music] So there's this moment in May 1936 where Tokyo police are dealing with full blown mass hysteria.

1:03 Rumors are flying that a mad woman is loose in the Ginza district, hunting men with a kitchen knife. Women and kimonos are getting stopped on the street. Everyone's genuinely terrified. The newspapers are running wild with speculation. The reality? The woman they're searching for is sitting in movie theaters watching romantic films. She's browsing shops. She's checking into hotels and sleeping peacefully. And yes, she's carrying her dead lover's severed genitals in her purse, but she's treating them with the tenderness that you'd show a photograph of someone you lost. Her name is Sada Abe. Understanding how she ended up here means going back to a summer day when she was 15.

1:45 Tokyo in 1920 looks different from what you're probably thinking. Sada grows up in the condo neighborhood, the working class heart of the city. Her family makes tatami mats for a living. She's the seventh of eight kids. Her mother has artistic ambitions that don't match their social class, so she encourages Sada to learn shamisen and singing. These skills could either refine you or mark you for the sex trade, depending entirely on which direction life pushes you. Then once summer afternoon, she's at a friend's house when a university student forces himself on her. Her violation determines everything that follows. For Genoty in 1920s Japan is currency.

2:28 It's a daughter's value to her family. Once you lose it, especially through rape, you're considered permanently damaged. Her family doesn't pursue justice. They don't comfort or protect her. They treat her like she's the problem. She gets ostracized, labeled as corrupted, told she's unmarriageable. The message becomes clear, you brought shame to this household. Sada absorbs this completely. If society declares her a prostitute for something done to her against her will, she'll become exactly that. She enters the Gaysha world, except she's starting way too late to become one of those highly trained artists. She ends up working as what they politely call a pillow Gaysha, which means high-end prostitute.

3:14 She's moving through establishments where entertainment and sex work are the same thing. Then she contracts syphilis. Before antibiotics, this diagnosis is catastrophic. The treatments involve arsenic injections and mercury compounds. You're subjected to mandatory police examinations because the government regulates license prostitution. To escape that humiliation, Sada starts working unlicensed, bouncing between cities as a waitress or maid, whatever keeps her name off official registers. By 1936, she's 31. In the pleasure quarters, that makes her ancient. She's been ground down by the system for over a decade, scarred by disease and hardened by hundreds of transactional encounters.

3:58 The man she meets is named Kichizo Ishida. He owns a successful restaurant in Tokyo. He's married with children, respected in his community. He's also a regular patron of the pleasure districts. Someone who believes his wealth entitles him to women's bodies as entertainment. When he meets Sada, something shifts. Most Gaysha's perform submission as part of the service. Sada doesn't do any of that. She's sexually forward, possessive, completely uninterested in the usual performance. For someone bored with scripted interactions, she's becoming fascinating. Her relationship unfolds mostly inside a tea house, built specifically for secret affairs.

4:40 They're tucked into quiet residential areas offering privacy. Inside these spaces, the outside world vanishes. No family responsibilities, no economic pressures. There's nothing except two people and whatever they're building together. They start spending entire days locked in these rooms. Heavy drinking. Marathon sexual encounters. At some point, they introduce strangulation into their intimacy. This part matters. She's not forcing this on him. According to trial records and her testimony, he actively wants this. He finds pleasure in being choked during sex and how oxygen deprivation intensifies sensation.

5:22 She uses her obi sash or accord, tightening in around his throats until he's hovering at the edge of unconsciousness before releasing. Versata, this becomes transformative. Her entire adult life has been about being used, being controlled. But holding his breath in her hands, that's absolute power. She decides whether he lives or dies. According to her statements, he tells her, quote, "It feels so good you might as well kill me." So, on May 18th, 1936, she does. They're staying at a tea house in the Ogu neighborhood. They've been there for several days straight. On the morning of May 18th, while he's sleeping, Sada wraps her sash around his neck one more time.

6:08 This time, she doesn't release it. There's no struggle, no knocked over furniture. It's quiet and intimate, the natural conclusion to everything they've been doing. What happens next defines the case. She takes a knife and severs his genitals completely. And police ask her why, her answer is disturbingly rational. Quote, "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. In her mind, she's not destroying him, she's preserving him. She can't carry his whole body, so she takes the part that represents their sexual connection. A dead, castrated man can never return to his wife.

6:50 He could never sleep with another gaysia. He belongs to her forever. Before leaving, she uses his blood as ink. She writes on the bedsheets, "Sada Kichi, the two of us forever." She carves her name into his thigh. Then she walks out and disappears into Tokyo. Over the next three days, Sada wanders the city in what witnesses describe as a "serene calm." She has the severed genitals wrapped in oil paper and cloth tucked inside her kimono sleeve. According to testimony, she speaks to them like they're him, maintaining conversations with the body parts as though her lover is still present. She buys tickets to romantic movies.

7:33 She stays in different hotels. She goes shopping. She's living inside a private reality where her lover remains with her. Meanwhile, Tokyo descends into chaos. The body has been discovered. The newspapers are exploding with coverage because every detail fits the erotic grotesque sensibility dominating 1930s Japanese media. Rumors multiply. Every woman in traditional dress becomes a potential suspect. On May 20th, police track her to an inn in Takanawa. When detectives enter, they don't encounter someone trying to escape. She's simply waiting. They ask for evidence. She calmly unwraps the bundle and produces the genitals.

8:15 Multiple officers describe her demeanor as "radient" or "peaceful." She doesn't resist. The police interrogation creates transcripts known underground as "the glossy record." The interrogators press for explicit sexual details. Specific positions. Frequency. The exact mechanics of the strangulation. The state apparatus supposed to enforce public morality transforms into a consumer of pornography. Sada answers everything directly. She's articulate and unashamed. She refuses to classify what she did as murder in any traditional sense. To her, this was a preservation. Love extended to its absolute extreme.

8:57 The trial brings in psychiatrists who diagnose her with hysteria and nymphomania. Catch all labels for women who don't conform. They examine her menstrual cycle. Investigate her family for signs of moral degeneracy. The verdict surprises everyone. Six years for second degree murder and mutilation of a corpse. The leniency comes from the court recognizing elements of a traditional love suicide. In Japanese culture, survivors of suicide packs often get treated as tragic figures. There's also strange public sympathy building around her. In a society built on arranged, passionless marriages, her crime reads like an absolute devotion taken to its conclusion.

9:40 She's released in 1941, freed as part of a general amnesty. She walks out into a Japan transformed by war. After World War II ends, Sada re-emerges as a celebrity. She publishes an autobiography in 1948. Then she stars in a traveling stage play where she performs as herself, re-enacting a sanitized version of her crime. Theaters fill with audiences paying to watch the actual murderer act out her story. This comment on the eerie authenticity of her performance. By the 1950s, she opens a bar in Tokyo. Riders and artists treat it like a destination.

10:20 You can have sake poured by the woman who severed a penis and carried it through the city for three days. She becomes a living artifact. Then in 1970, she vanishes. She closes the bar and cuts all contact. Theories spread. Suicide. A Buddhist Convent. Quiet death somewhere unnamed. But there's one final chapter. Around 1992, she's reportedly located by Isse Sagawa. The infamous Kobe Cannibal, who murdered and consumed a student in Paris, then got deported and released on a technicality. He finds her in a nursing home. She's 87. Sada Abe died shortly after.

11:02 There's no confirmed death certificates, no public grave. She exited the world as a ghost. The same way she spent those three days after the murder. Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, Bingeable True Crime Stories. My name is Joe. I'm the host, and here's an email subject case selection. Hi, Joe. How do you decide which case is to cover? Listener suggestions, personal interest, or something else? Omar in Flagstaff, Arizona. And Omar, thanks for the email, and I'll tell you what, it's 99% listener suggestions.

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