RedHanded - Episode 385 - Killer Geisha: Abe Sada

Episode Date: February 6, 2025

The sex-mad geisha who sliced off her lover’s genitals, strangled him with a kimono belt, and carved her name into his arm, is perhaps Japan’s most famous criminal of the 20th century.Today, Abe’s story is practically a part of Japanese folklore. So how did this brutal killer become an unlikely celebrity, feminist icon and star of stage and screen? What exactly is a geisha? And what does her story tell us about the mystifying world of Japanese sexuality today?Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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I'm Hannah. I'm Saruti. And Konnichiwa are red-handed. We have tried to record this before, and it went so wrong so many times that even opening this document fills me with anxiety and stress. Yeah. So just hang on. Let's do it.

I believe today is the day. It's happening. We're recording. I hope so. I can see you. I can hear you. This is good. We're in two different studios.

I'm not just like losing my mind and wassup. Let's do it. Yes. We are separate, but we are all going to Japan together, specifically May the 10th, 1936, when Agesha and her lover checked into a hotel. They were totally infatuated with each other and for the next week they barely left that hotel room. The non-stop no-holds-barred lovemaking marathon didn't even stop when maids came into the room to pour them drinks or clean up a bit and I imagine it was pretty gross in there. But then, nine days later on the morning of the 19th of May, the geisha left that hotel

alone. At 3pm, a maid looked in on the room and found the lover. He was dead. And not just dead, mutilated, in fact, lying on a futon. It appeared that he'd been strangled to death with a kimono belt, which is quite apt. A futon and a kimono belt. Come on. Yes, and the next bit is the worst. We've just recorded about meat falling from the sky and now we're moving on to genital mutilation because this man's genitals had been severed clean off and they were nowhere to be found.

Naturally, dried blood was pretty much everywhere, specifically his crotch, and then written in blood on the bedsheets in that hotel were the words, Sada and Kichi, alone together. And most horrifyingly of all, possibly close second to the chopped off knob, I would say. The geisha's name, Sada, was carved into the dead man's arm and into his thigh. Ugh. Okay. Look, if this was some sort of ITV drama, I would be like, who in the fresh fuck wrote this shit? Because you would be like, okay, right, guys, it's in Japan. We've got to set something in Japan. We need to really capture that Japanese market. We'll have a futon.

We'll have a kimono belt that's used to strangle him. A geisha. What else is Japanese? I mean, the pre-cosa to the love motel basically is what this is. Yes. Yes. Yes. And then let's also really hammer it up with names written in blood on the bedsheets and name carved into his arm. This, it just sounds too bonkers and too culturally pigeonholed to sound real. But a big reason to why it's become so iconic. This is so famous. This is such a famous case, not just in Japan, but like anyone, anyone who's, you know, anyone who's anyone. I think, anyone who's anyone. I think we're, you know, we're all at least peripherally aware of Japanese sex

attitudes versus their completely oppressed society. And this blows this wide open. And it's from the thirties.. It just improves the whole thing. Absolutely. So let's get into it because this is the very true story of Abe Sada, the murderous geisha who chopped off her lover's genitals and carried them off, wrapped in her kimono while she ate some sashimi, possibly. It's Japan's most sensational crime of the 20th century, one that's been retold in countless films and books, and almost become part of Japanese folklore. Imagine if Lizzie Borden had been an insatiably horny sex worker in a kimono, and you're only halfway there.

And just to interject there, Geisha are not sex workers and we will go on to explain that later on, but Abisada is both at different points in her life for various reasons. So I just want to interject there before we get shouted at. Geisha and sex workers are different things. Good to clarify. So yes, set aside your ideas of a Japanese Lizzie Borden because much like that kimono that had the severed genitals inside it, this story's lurid details are wrapped up in layer after important layer, sexual expression and repression, and also the meeting of the

old samurai-era customs colliding with Western Victorian morality. with Western Victorian morality. In his essay, Mad in Japan, British journalist A. A. Gill wrote, Sex is where the weirdness of the Japanese peaks. And we've all heard about the dirty nick of ending machines. And also, do you remember when I went to that party and the girl had that really famous tentacle porn tattooed on her back. And I was like, that is so intense. But I was like, I've got to get a picture of it because I cannot believe that. And it was huge and detailed and like, if you haven't seen it, just Google it and you'll, you will have seen it.

Lots of Japanese art featuring all sorts of interesting sex with fish and animals and octopus and... It's quite prevalent. Tentacly, yeah. More so than other forms, I would say. But I asked her, I was like, oh, so like, what's your connection to Japan? Because she didn't just have that one. She had loads of, what's that rope one? Is she something? She had lots of tattoos displaying distinctly Japanese, very recognizable, different types of porn basically. And she was like, oh no, never been. That's a big commitment.

Yeah, no thanks. There's also that other style of, I don't remember what it's called, but ages and ages and ages ago, do you remember on Under the Duvet or on a main feed, I can't remember, I said I had like started talking to this guy on Hinge years and years ago and how it freaked me out. Yes, I remember. Because he was into like that weird, I think it was Japanese where it's like horror porn or like gore porn, but it wasn't like porn, it's like an artistic thing or whatever. And it was basically like people fucking while they're like, their bodies are falling apart

and they're like licking their eyeballs and it's like gross out sex. And I'm sure people are screaming as they were at me on like social media and they were like, it's an art form. You're so narrow minded. And I was like, mate, you fucking date him then. Like, I don't want to have anything to do with this. But yeah, no, not for me. Not for me. I just tried to Google it because I couldn't remember what it was called. And I just Googled horror sex Japanese and it is an entire, every single Google search is for a porn website. So I'm just going to close that link now. Yeah. Yeah.

No thanks. Our Google searches are incriminating enough. We don't need more. Let's just close that down. So yeah, lots of weird shit. And a lot of Western visitors go to Japan and come back a bit baffled. To Westernize, it can be quite hard to make sense of the more sensationalized side of Japanese sexuality. We've discussed the tentacle porn and celebrations like the Kawasaki Penis Festival. There's also a park that's just big old dicks made out of wood, stone, whatever, you can run around.

Actually, they have one in Korea as well, but I think the most famous one is in Japan. What is this penis festival? Oh, wow. They just love it, just love it, mate. Yeah, Google image that, just like, yeah, just like a parade, a parade with lots of dicks. Lots of people eating like penis ice lollies, lots of old women holding dicks. It's very unusual.

And then of course the darker side of the upskirting epidemics that are so widespread that anywhere in Asia, I believe, because I had one of these phones, you cannot buy a phone without the camera shutter sound. You cannot turn it off. That is some practical problem solving though. I will give them that. Absolutely. Absolutely. Because I remember when I first bought a phone in Asia and I was like, what the shit? This is so annoying. And then people were like, well, the thing is we're not allowed it. And then also we've got the images of sexualized manga school girls and you only have to set foot in the center of Tokyo and Osaka

also to see how prevalent they really are. In Osaka there's a bridge and these girls, I've watched them, they wake up at four o'clock in the morning to get ready and then they dress up in these like incredibly elaborate manga, schoolgirl, child-like costumes and all they do is stand on the bridge all day and take pictures of each other and then with anyone who wants to take pictures with them. And they're there all day. And like, I don't know how maybe this has been disproved now, but something I read a lot about in university is this like infantilism thing of like dressing like schoolgirls, not growing up, which also sort of funnels into the teenage boys who never come out of their room, is

that once you go to work, your life is really hard. So it's like staying in this like childlike phase, is one theory. Many people disagree with it, but that's just something I thought was interesting. But then also, we see all of these things, and this is the dichotomy, because at the very same time, Japan is as buttoned up as it gets. There is a much widely reported celibacy syndrome in which half of young Japanese women say that they hate even the idea of having sex. And Japan still has some of the most draconian censorship laws when it comes to nudity and sex on screen in the world. So that's why it's so interesting because sex is everywhere and nowhere. And it's a lot more complicated than its reputation suggests. And this story maybe illustrates that complication better than anything. So

before we get to all the salacious member slicing that I know you're all here for, let's shoot back a few hundred years and talk about Japanese sex work. Obviously as the world's oldest profession, sex work has been happening in Japan about as long as people have enjoyed shagging. And you know, money. And tentacles. Yes. And through a lot of Japanese history, men were not really expected to be faithful

to their wives. The homestead was seen as a place of familial duty above personal love. I would say that's pretty common in most cultures. You know, marriage and love together as a concept is quite a modern phenomena. You know, even if you go back to the Victorian times or in lots of places in other parts of the world, those two things aren't together. You marry out of making alliances and things like that, companionship, financial stability, raising a family, not necessarily for love and sex and all that. So yeah, courtesans, paid mistresses and trips to the pleasure house were pretty common and not really that shameful.

It was seen as an outlet, and sex workers provided not just sex, but also companionship and entertainment. And in the 16th century, the powers that be set up pleasure districts, gathering all of these pleasure houses together in one raunchy place. Shortly after that, from the 17th century, Japan totally shut itself off from the rest of the world for 265 years. And that period of time is called Sekaku. And we did actually do a full Japanese history rundown in our shorthand on Korean comfort women, and when I say full rundown I mean it

in the way we always mean when we refer to shorthand which is simplified to an almost offensive degree. There's of course a lot more reading you can do on the comfort women and Japan itself than our 25 minute shorthand but anyway. Comfort women is a Japanese state sanctioned sex slavery during World War II, which they have never apologized for. So you can go and listen to that episode if you want to feel really sad. Anyway, during Sakoku, those 265 years, pretty much all contact with other countries was shut down. And during that time, the population of Japan, which is famously in big trouble these days, completely thrived,

and as did Japanese culture, because there was no outside influence coming in. Japanese beliefs and ideals are based on a mixture of things. We've got Confucianism, Buddhism, Shintoism. And what Shintoism is all about is that objects, places, and creatures all have their own spirit, and that is a religion native to Japan. It is from there, it grew there. It didn't come in from anywhere else. So during that time, a lot of traditional Japanese art forms flourished as well, including dance, theatre and music. And by the mid-18th century, all this inspired the idiosyncratic art of the geisha. So yes, it's time to demystify the wonderful world of geisha.

So what exactly are they? And more to the point, are they sex workers? Well, yes and no, but mostly no. Like we said, the first geisha started performing in the mid 1700s. And the first geisha were actually men. But after 100 years or so, they were all women. And their job was simply to entertain people who came to the pleasure quarters. The geisha's job was to relax customers into the evening.

They'd put on musical performances or dances and put guests at ease before customers went on to get their rocks off with the real sex workers. After all, who wants to go straight from a long day at the factory, straight down to bonking? Who want to have a drink first, maybe a chat and enjoy a song or two? That's what the geisha are for. And the word geisha actually comes from ge meaning arts or skills, and char, meaning person. So their job was and still is essentially to pour drinks, make sparkling conversation, laugh at their guests' jokes, and perform their dance or specific skill.

They're the French bulldog of the Japanese pleasure quarter. Yes, I was going to say that and I thought people might be offended, but yes, the French Bulldog, famously the fluffer of the French brothel back in the day, that's what they were bred for. Basically for people, men who would come in and feel a little bit awkward. And so here, have a French Bulldog sit on your lap and warm yourself up and then, you know, let's get down to business. In the early years, some classes of Geisha did end up having sex with their clients. And the lines got a little blurry. But mostly Geisha were high class, impeccably dressed, ideal dinner guests. They were, and still are, trained from a very young age in elegant dances, note perfect singing, politeness, good conversation, the tea ceremony, obviously, huge deal.

They take lessons in art history and religion, so their witty repartee with the upper restaurants of the male society is pretty top notch. Their kimono, makeup, and hair are always intricate and beautiful and it takes hours to get it all right. So geisha were the height of fashion for a long time. Their tight restrictive kimono and elevated wooden slippers made it very difficult to walk and even harder to dance so what they're doing is really impressive. Especially when their standards of poise and grace are so high and their job is to make it look easy, which it isn't. So from the very beginning, despite their association with the pleasure quarters, geisha

were also considered to be the absolute peak of elegance and class. In some ways, geisha were a lot more liberated than other Japanese women. They were financially independent, they had job security for life, and they had a lot more personal freedom than the average Japanese housewife, and I don't think those are insignificant things. But we're leaping ahead slightly. It's more important to say that today, geisha are totally separated from sex work. And it's been that way for a good while now. During World War II, sex workers in kimonos would approach American GIs and they became known as geisha girls, which they weren't. And that spread the idea that geisha were just high-class sex workers.

These days, real geisha work in designated houses called okia, which hold tea parties for paying guests. They're basically hired party guests, perfect hosts in a fantasy world where high-powered salarymen go to relax. And though they might stroke your ego and do some gentle flirting, it's understood that it's all a fantasy, and sex is very much off the table. Geisha also don't partake in any of the food, but they are expected to drink along with the guests and take part in all sorts of saki-heavy drinking games. And that's before they flawlessly perform their dance routines, staying demure and graceful throughout.

So they really have to be able to hold their boots. Being an actual royal is never about finding your happy ending, but the worst part is, if they step out of line or fall in love with the wrong person, it changes the course of history. I'm Arisha Skidmore Williams. And I'm Brooke Zephyrin. We've been telling the stories of the rich and famous on the hit wonder show, Even the Rich, and talking about the latest celebrity news on Rich and Daily.

We're going all over the world on our new show, Even the Royals. We'll be diving headfirst into the lives of the world's kings, queens, and all the wannabes in their orbit throughout history. Think succession meets the crown meets real life. We're going to pull back the gilded curtain and show how royal status might be bright and shiny, but it comes at the expense of, well, everything else. Like your freedom, your privacy, and sometimes even your head. Follow Even The Royals on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Even The Royals early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery+. In the 1980s, a rose swept the country.

Hey Mike, I really like this white Zinfandel. Well good, good. Now put it down, I'm going to try another one. White Zin became America's top-selling wine. But most don't know that this sweet drink has a sour history. What began in 1986 with counterfeit bottles, A big fraud, a multi-million dollar fraud. sent investigators chasing one of the most powerful families

in the business, the Lachartes. But the closer the feds got to them, the more dangerous things became. It's a story of deceit. At the time I was paranoid. Threats. You touch my kids, I will kill threats, and murder. What started with a scheme to mislabel wine spilled into a blood-soaked battle for succession.

Welcome to Blood Vines. You can binge listen to Blood Vines exclusively and ad-free on Wondery+. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts, or Spotify. Anyway, we are almost done with our history lesson, so let's jump back to the 19th century. When the U.S. arrived to Japan with big, bad warships, the Japanese knew that its isolation was over. And it wasted no time in jumping whole-hawk into becoming a world power. Japan knew that if it didn't get with the program, it was in danger of being colonised, so instead it started trying to fit in with the new Westernised global world order. A lot of Japan's old beliefs associated with Buddhism and Shintoism were suddenly considered

immoral, old-fashioned and even corrupt. So instead, the Japanese took on all sorts of Western Victorian-era ideas like chastity, philosophical enlightenment and civility. And also colonizing everyone else. Around the start of the 20th century, Japan had two major wins. They managed to snatch Korea off the Chinese, and they also got a big chunk of Russia from the Russians. Even then, the ruling classes in Japan were still the descendants of old, old samurai

families. Power had been strictly handed down from father to son for centuries. So taking on Western attitudes of faithfulness and chastity outside of wedlock kind of suited them down to the ground. It's a great way to avoid any pesky gamer throne-style bastard heirs from grabbing at the throne. But out in the sticks, it was still pretty old school. There, women were far more independent. They worked out in the fields with the men.

They could earn their own money and even own their own property. And they were pretty sexually active. Sex before marriage was incredibly common. Surprise pregnancies weren't particularly shameful. And divorce and remarriage were perfectly fine. But... In 1889, the powers that be clamped down. In the shape of a reform movement that called for civilization and enlightenment. Monogamy, chastity, and filial piety were the name of the game. As

well as suiting the aristocracy for sex reasons, it also made people more subservient and loyal to the emperor, which obviously worked pretty well for him. Plus, Japan looked all civilized, quote unquote, to the rest of the world when they came knocking. All sorts of new moral texts were written and distributed, and in one fell swoop, many women were stripped of their rights, rights that they'd enjoyed for as long as anyone could remember. They were suddenly just gone, and that meant

the sudden separation of women into two very distinct classes. First, there was the household woman, the wife, mother, head of the household, and then the second class of woman, the wife, mother, head of the household, and then the second class of women, the fallen ones, who through some shameful act or other transgression had fallen into disrepute. These women were totally unseatable for marriage, but still considered sexually attractive and above all, available.

And all of this is to say that the period between about 1850 and the start of the Second World War was a time of massive social change. Mostly it was a big effort to get in line with Western customs at absolute breakneck speed after a long, long time keeping themselves to themselves. And that sort of cultural whiplash that Japanese culture experienced goes some way to explain the apparent double standards that still prevail today. And it was among all this that Abe Sada was born. Sometimes she's referred to in English as Sada Abe with her surname last, but in

Japan she was Abe Sada and it also sounds nicer and it's correct so we're going to stick with it. Abe Sada was born in 1905 in the Kanda neighborhood of Tokyo. Her family made tatami, which is the woven surface used on the floors of Japanese houses. Craftsmanship is particularly well respected in Japan and the Abe's were skilled at what they did so as a result they were very well off. Abe's parents both steered clear of alcohol and they were faithful to each other. They had no dealings with any dodgy activities at all ever and that's probably because they were quite busy

with their eight children. Although, having said that, only four of those kids made it to adulthood. Due to a series of babies that didn't make it to their first birthday, Abe Sada was the youngest by far of her siblings, and she was completely spoiled as well. Her mother encouraged the young Abe to be independent and free-spirited. Seems like a very Dance Moms energy. She was very proud of her daughter's beauty. She dressed her up, she paraded her around. And she was living out her fantasies through her daughter.

At school, Sada was lazy and her grades were, sadly, pretty terrible. But she showed real promise in her singing lessons and playing the shinkansen, which is a very old and timey traditional Japanese guitar, which will come up later. It's very impressive, very complicated instrument. And her brother, Shintaro, was known around town as a real sleazeball womanizer. He'd steal money from the family business and spend it all on wild drunken benders. And his parents always turned a blind eye.

But their elder sister, Taroku, was not given the same grace. Taroku had an affair at a pretty early age and later was casually dating three separate guys at once. So her father sold Taraku to a brothel. Does seem quite harsh, doesn't it? It is, doesn't it? And Taraku actually stayed in indentured servitude there for two years until her father finally

decided that she'd learned her lesson and bought out the rest of her contract. It's kind of like she's sleeping with these guys, so he's like, right, I'm selling you to a brothel. It's kind of like you get caught with a cigarette and your mom makes you like smoke the entire pack. It's exactly that, yes. Now this is a pretty stark example for the young Abe Sade, who's watching what happened to her sister, of the difference between men and women in her family and also in wider society. And soon enough, she felt it first-hand too.

When Abesade's parents started big-time arguing about the family inheritance, they encouraged Abesade to start spending more time outside of their house with her friends. And one night, when she was out with an acquaintance, a student at Keogh University, he forced himself on her and he raped her and she was just 15. In the days afterwards, she was filled with a furious sense of injustice. Especially when the man's parents refused to even speak to her parents about what happened. This guy, this student, was from an upper-class family and he didn't want his reputation to be tarnished by what he had done and neither did his parents and it is so depressing, please see our episode

on Brock Turner, that we don't seem to have moved on at all. Anyway, I can't let myself go down that route because I'll have another tantrum. Anyway, it is also worth pointing out that rape at the time in Japan was very low down the police's priority list. So not only was Abe Sada furious, she knew that there was no point in going to the police. She wouldn't be taken seriously. So now at just 15, Abe could see as plain as day how much her gender and her class were stacked against her. She also knew that in many people's eyes, what happened against her will had tarnished her for life.

Abe actually had a boyfriend at that time, but after she was raped, he left the area and he never spoke to her again. Her marriage prospects were very low. At just 15, Abbe was already a fallen woman, and it was completely out of her control. She later said in her police interview that after the assault, quote, my attitude changed and I started to go around Asakusa with a bunch of delinquents. What happened drove me to desperation. And from then on, she showed a lot of common signs of a victim of assault that didn't get the right help.

Trauma, difficulty trusting people, and rebelliousness, in an attempt to take back control. Abesada started stealing money from her family to take her friends out on the town. And once, her parents locked her in her room to try and stop her, but she escaped through the window and went out anyway. Her parents, not sure what to do about anything, got her a job as a servant. She worked as a maid to the daughter of a wealthy family and Abisada hated it, and she also hated how lonely she was. She was being forced to eat in the kitchen while the family enjoyed the meal that she had made in the next room.

So one night she went into the wealthy daughter's room, put on one of her finest kimono and a bunch of her jewellery and just went out on the town, for which she was obviously fired, and it also turned out to be her first of many run-ins with the police. Her father said that she had some kind of, and this is a quote, sexual dementia, which was the main reason she got into so much trouble. So her parents, once again unsure what they were going to do with her, reached for the only other card in their problem daughter deck, and they sold her into indentured servitude. In 1922, at the age of 17, Abeisada was sent

to an okia, a geisha house in Yokohama. Now at first, Abeisada was not totally bummed out by this move, especially considering that her older sister had been sent straight to a brothel instead. Like we said, geisha were pretty glamorous. The art and fashions of high we said, geisha were pretty glamorous. The art and fashions of high-ranking geisha were imitated across the country. Plus from a very young age, Abesada had also learned exactly the kind of classical dance and music that was studied and performed by the geisha. And then there was the much less fun reason that she later put this way. My

body is already filthy. I don't care anymore." Still, becoming an accomplished Geisha was a real mark of distinction, and Sada finally saw a path forward for herself. Maybe everything would be alright. Except because of the way we have structured this episode we know that alright it certainly would not be. Initially Abhisada enjoyed the geisha training and her musical education but the reality of geisha life was just waiting around the corner. Even though she'd been just 17 when she started, most of the girls her age had already been training for years.

They'd grown up and been raised immersed in the Geisha system. So, Abhisada was just never ever going to be the best. And being a low-ranking Geisha back then meant that customers felt a lot more comfortable asking for sex. And the Geisha bosses wouldn't always stop them. So Abhisada started sleeping with her customers and after a few years, kind of inevitably, she got syphilis. Which was incurable back then, but controllable.

So she was allowed to keep working as long as she had regular health inspections, which I don't imagine was that rare. God. Now, Geisha as a rule did not have to undergo these inspections, but sex workers did. So now that Abeisada had to have them, and since she was selling sex anyway, she eventually decided to turn to sex work. After all, the money was better. So at the age of 21, she left the Okia and joined a state-licensed brothel in Osaka. But once there, she soon realized why the money was better.

Because brothel life was way, way, way worse. Keisha had a reputation on their side, and clients treated them with respect. They were given some degree of control over their encounters as well. But now, in this brothel, Abesada found herself treated like an object. She started stealing, and when she was caught in punish, she ran away. Since she was still paying out her contract with the brothel, though, she had to lay low. In 1934, when an unlicensed brothel she worked at was raided by police, Abisada was bailed out by a well-connected friend of the owner, Kinosuke Kasahara.

Kinosuke fell for Abisada really quickly, and she was his mistress for quite a while. She started to realize that sex could be not something that was just demanded of her and something that she sold, but something she enjoyed. A lot. In fact, she and Kinosuke had to end things when her demands of him in the bedroom got too much for him. And years later, Kiniseki would testify that Abesada was, quote, a woman whom men should fear. He went on to say she wasn't satisfied unless we did it two, three, or four times a night.

To her, it was unacceptable, unless I had my hand on her private parts all night long. At first, it was great, but after a couple of weeks, I got a little exhausted. That sounds awful! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! My God. It does sound awful. I'm upset.

Ha ha ha ha ha! Everyone out there should listen to Small Town Murder. You really should, mainly because you never know who's next door. And that's the point of this show, really. You never know who is next door. You never know what's going to happen on Small Town Murder. That's what makes it so wonderful.

The only thing you do know is that people are going to die, and we're probably going to make jokes about it. That's it. That's all we can promise you. We dig into these towns. We see what makes them tick from local legends to scandals they may have had. And of course, the biggest scandals of all, horrible murders that take place there. And we put our, what I feel is completely appropriate comedic spin on the whole thing. And you know you need a laugh right now. So get in there, listen to Small Town Murder, follow Small Town Murder on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen to Small Town Murder early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus.

A few miles from the glass spires of Midtown Atlanta lies the South River Forest. In 2021 and 2022, the woods became a home to activists from all over the country who gathered to stop the nearby construction of a massive new police training facility nicknamed Cop City. At approximately nine o'clock this morning, as law enforcement was moving through various sectors of the property, an individual without warning

shot a Georgia State Patrol trooper. This is We Came to the Forest, a story about resistance. The abolitionist mission isn't done until every prison is empty and shut down. Love and fellowship. It was probably the happiest I've ever been in my life. And the lengths will go to protect the things we hold closest to our hearts.

Follow We Came to the Forest on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can binge all episodes of We Came to the Forest early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. Having said that, it does become quite difficult to separate the truth from the legend in the story of Abe Sada because so much of it, because of quotes like that from men who were afraid of her, have mythologised her story. But what is clear for everyone to see is that from this point on, Abe Sada was pretty insatiably randy all of the time. It doesn't ever seem to stop. Now apart from the fact that Kinosuke couldn't keep up, Abe Sada eventually ended things

because she wanted to settle down and finally get some permanence in her life. And she knew that he'd never leave his wife. They also argued over the financial aspect. As a paid mistress it was all too transactional for her liking. But having had a taste of the relationship life, Abe Sada decided to leave sex work completely and move to Nagoya to get a job as a server in a restaurant, which is where she met Goro Omiya, the soft boy of the piece. Goro was a professor and banker with lofty political aspirations. And the two began a real whirlwind romance. Goro genuinely seemed to care for Abe Sada.

He was concerned for her well-being and would talk to her at length about her future plans. It was Sada's first real taste of proper romantic love. But they had to keep it all under wraps. Firstly, Goro was a regular in the restaurant she worked in, which was very protective of its we're-not-a-brothel reputation, so her fucking customer would have meant big trouble. Plus, her past wouldn't be a great look if Goro ever did fancy running for office. Still, the relationship was doomed to fail anyway. Because once again, Goro could not satisfy Sada sexually.

But the ever-supportive Goro did promise that he would help Abe Sada to leave the sex industry for good. And he had a plan. that he would help Abe Sada to leave the sex industry for good. And he had a plan. He was going to buy her a restaurant to run herself. Abe Sada had seen women running restaurants before, and she admired their financial and emotional independence. But although she had been a waiter for a bit,

she didn't have that much experience in running a place. So Goro set her up with an apprenticeship at a Tokyo restaurant called Yoshidae. And it was all looking great. Abe Sada was making way more than she'd ever made as a sex worker, even still as an apprentice. Everything was going perfectly steadily. But pretty incapable of stability. What's the word? Maintenance? Stability is not her home, really. I don't think she knows that much to do with it. No, I think one thing that becomes quite clear with Abbi Sadat is that she's definitely drawn to the chaos and the drama of it all.

Yes, and that is exactly what happens. Even though Goro and her probably aren't having sex anymore because he can't keep up, he is still supporting her. He still found her this job a la the bear. But she fell for the restaurant's owner anyway, a 42-year-old called Ishida Kuchiso, a womanizer, a layabout, and owner of perfectly intact genitalia. For now. Now although Ishida owned the restaurant, by all accounts he did absolutely fuck all. And it was actually run day to day by his wife, Atoku. Ishida seems to just have sat around being lechie to the waitresses. And it wasn't long after Abe Sada started that he started making advances towards her.

He'd block her in the hallway, make a barrage of lewd comments, or grab her as she passed him. When she once stayed out late two nights in a row, he pushed her against a wall, bit her earlobe and pressed his knee into her. The knee thing, it's now considered entirely to be a lesbian move. Oh. It's a thing.

Is it? Never heard of it. We run in slightly different circles. If you can master the knee thing, top tier. Oh right, top tier lesbian. I see, I see. Top tier shagger. The lady who likes the ladies. Oh top shagger for sure. Okay got it. Top tier. Got it, got it. Okay so to me I was reading this and I was like that sounds horrible, that sounds awful but

it's not awful trust me okay so some people might like it and Abbe Sara was one of those because she was extremely into it it's all about the timing I see I see so one day Ishida's wife told Abbe there was a customer waiting for her in the annex. She went in with a bottle of sake to find Ishida himself sitting there. When she lent in to pour him a drink, he grabbed her and started kissing her. He then ordered a geisha in to sing them an old song, which sent Abbezadeh into an absolute creative rapture. And when the geisha left, Ishida and Abe Sada had sex for the first time.

So let's talk about the wife briefly. It does seem like Ishida did get her involved with his little sex operation. But as we said, this separation between wife, sexless homemaker and mistress, sexy sexy side piece, was quite common. So his wife was just probably kind of over the whole thing. And before long, Abby and Ashida, who she called Kichi as we know, were sneaking off during work hours all the time to do it in the back room. And because they were totally shameless and didn't really try and hide that much, they were caught quite often. Too many times, actually, so they started to head off to teahouses where they could just shag away at their heart's content. And we should mention that teahouse

was often a euphemistic way to refer to little inns that specialised in renting rooms for sex, which are the precursors to the famous love hotels that Japan have now and also most of Asia, I would say. And it's not always particularly, I've stayed in loads of love hotels, not because I was shagging because they were cheap. Oh yeah. When I was traveling in Asia with one of my good friends, we were in, I want to say we were in the Philippines and obviously we were taking a lot of like little flights in between the islands and it would just be very inconvenient, but we've just got like a few hours to kill, I just want to lie down somewhere. And you can get those just like book by the hour hotels, which are obviously, you know, for shagging. And we

would book into them together and you just get all these looks and be like, we're just here to sleep, we're just here to sleep. There was one place I will never ever forget in Manila that was every room was themed with some sort of weird fantasy setup. And we get there and the guy is like, so what theme do you want? And he was just like showing us this booklet of all of the different rooms. And it was in part funny, which is why we kept looking at them. But I was also like, I literally just want to go to sleep. And I feel so gross out because that is one of the things right you go into this room and I don't even remember I think we just ended up in this heart themed room and the realization of what you're in as opposed to if it's just an ordinary hotel room that you

know is used for shagging but one that is so obviously there for shagging because of this fantasy setup makes for quite uncomfortable getting into the bed to go to sleep feelings for me, I would say. Yeah, I try not to think about it. Anyway, even though they were getting caught all the time, it seemed like Abesada had finally met her sexual match. According to some people, the first time Abe Sade and her new lover got a room together, they had non-stop, day and night, sex for two weeks, which, as previously discussed, sounds awful. Kill me.

And as we already told you, even when maids came in, they didn't stop. They were totally obsessed with each other, and Ishida started confiding in Abisada things that he'd never even told his wife. Specifically, about the massive debts he owed on his restaurant that his wife didn't know about. And perhaps kinkily of all, Ishida invited Abesada to stop addressing him in formal language. Oh my god. I know. Ooh.

So, due to the aforementioned massive debts on the restaurant, heading out to hotels for weeks at a time is a pretty pricey lifestyle. But not to worry, because occasionally Abe Sada would take the train to Nagoya to visit good old Gora Omiya and lie to him to get him to give her some money. Then she'd head back to Tokyo for another non-stop sex hotel sesh with Ishida, not even stopping to eat or bathe. Bathe? Oh my god. That's very important. I hope she was wee-ing in between, otherwise you're getting a UTI straight away, mate.

Wee before, wee after, and bathe. Just wee as much as you can. Yeah, just if you're into it, during. But it's not what it is. Now with their new funds tricked out of Mr. Gora Amir, the couple also started ordering Geisha to their room to perform for them. But even these two couldn't stay out there shagging forever. And every time Ishida returned to his wife, Abe Sada sank into herself a bit more. She later said this,

It's hard to say exactly what was so good about Ishida. But it was impossible to say anything bad about his looks, his attitudes, his skill as a lover, the way he expressed his feelings. I had never met such a sexy man. Her infatuation had become an obsession, and she couldn't bear the idea of him being with another woman. So soon, Abe Sada turned to the bottle. She dreamt of running away with him, but knew that he would never leave his wife.

And on one of those evenings when she was alone, she thought about his death for the first time. She even later testified, I came to think all the more about killing him, to the point that there was no stopping me. And I would say that those last few words do sound an awful lot like premeditation, given what we know is about to happen. Given what we know, yes, but on its own possibly not. Conspiracy to commit, perhaps. Uh-huh.

So on the 9th of May 1936, Abe Sada went to the theatre. The play was called Senshaku Tsuya Ya Monogatari, or, in English, New Tales of the Erotic, and it featured a scene in which a geisha attacked her lover with a knife. Two days later, Abe Sada bought a knife of her own. The next time she saw Ashida, she whipped out the knife and threatened him with it. But it didn't necessarily have totally the desired effect, or maybe it did, I don't know what game she's playing. Didn't really scare him, it turned him on instead. And another time, while they were having sex, Abisada held the knife to the base of his penis, and she told him that she would make sure that he would never play around with other women ever again. And do you remember who else said that?

No. Estella Sexton. Eddie Lee Sexton and Estella Sexton are living in Little Man as a State Park, and they find all those letters, and she's like, if you ever, if I die and you end up with someone else, I'm coming back to cut a bit off you is what she says. I remember, I remember. Anyway he was not afraid, he just laughed. And in a way, it's not particularly surprising that he wasn't too taken aback. As well as their insane stamina, Abbe and Ashida had been upping the kinky stakes.

Which I mean, you're gonna get bored, you just are if you're shagging 24-7 for two weeks on end doing the same shit you are. It's just, it's just, where does it end? Where does it end? Don't. We know where it ends. She goes on. Anyway, they start fairly low-key, in my opinion, with a bit of auto-erotic asphyxiation. Well,

no, just erotic asphyxiation, because she's doing it to him with a kimono belt. He liked it so much that they carried on messing around with the asphyxiation thing for about two hours, which is so dangerous. But it became something of a favorite of theirs, even when it did go quite badly wrong. And if you thought Knifepenis Gate was enough of a sign for them to calm down, it absolutely was not. Once when Abe Sada was strangling her lover, she did it a little bit too hard, and he went limp and his eyes became bloodshot and swollen, and he passed out. When he came back around, he was clearly in quite a lot of pain, but they both agreed

that they couldn't go to hospital because the doctors might tell the police. So instead, Abe Sada just shoved him in the bath to cool down a bit and then went to a pharmacy. I don't know why she trusted the pharmacist more than a hospital doctor, but she did. And this pharmacist told her that Ishida would take a month to return to normal. Wow. Yeah. Currently in the UK, we're trialing a situation, right, where you cannot get a GP appointment because everything's fucked. So you just go to the pharmacist if you need things like antibiotics. So they will give you antibiotics if you've got like a chest infection, a UTI or tonsillitis as

I discovered over the new year. I didn't know that they could also give you advice on how long it takes to recover from being strangled by a kimono belt for two hours, a month. It's going to take a month. She's got syphilis. They ain't giving her antibiotics. They haven't got them yet. Oh, yeah. So it's a long time, as the pharmacist tells them before she is going to be okay. And it was only now that the pair finally got a bit spooked. Though not because of the clear and present danger to life you know, life, but rather because they were running out of cash and couldn't stay away from the restaurant

for another full month. So while they wondered what to do, on the 8th of May 1936, they checked into the Masaki teahouse. Nine days later, most of Ishida Ichizo would leave in a body bag. Because on the night of the 18th of May, Ishida started talking to Abe Sada about his children and how important they were to him. After he fell asleep, Abe lay awake. She couldn't shake the idea that no matter how close the couple got, Ishida would never leave his life at the restaurant.

She even wondered about a suicide pact, but knew he'd never agree to that. Because obviously he didn't want to abandon his children that he loved so much. So at around 2 AM, Abesada sat up and squeezed her obi around his throat. When she couldn't stop shaking, she threw back some sake, squeezed harder, and tied a knot in the belt to ensure that Ishida would die. She would later say that once it was done, she felt totally at ease, as though a heavy burden had been lifted from her shoulders and felt a sense of clarity. After he stopped moving, Abesada lay down next to his corpse and finally,

briefly fell asleep. Okay, Dennis, like how are you going to sleep? Anyway, she wasn't asleep for long and, ala Dennis Nilsen, as soon as she woke up, she started fondling the dead body next to her. And when she realised that her time was probably up and she was going to need to leave, she decided that she was going to take her dead lover's genitals with her. So she went and got her knife and she chopped them off. And then with the same knife she carved the characters for Sada and Kichi Ishida alone together into his thigh. And using the blood that flowed out from the wound subsequently she wrote that same message

again in blood on a bed sheet. And she carved her name into his arm. Just to be sure. Just to be totally sure. Just belt and braces. Kimono belt and braces. Yeah. Isn't there something in like Japanese mythology folklore that if the body isn't whole, it can't go to heaven? No, that's Catholics, I think. I thought there was something in Japan about that.

I mean, it might be. Maybe. But she's like, even if you get to heaven, you're not fucking anyone else, because I've got your dick. That's the point, I think. And my name is carved on your arm. Yes. So everyone's going to know in this life and the next. Then she put on Ashida's underwear and put her clothes on over the top and tore off the front page of a magazine, wrapped

her genital prize inside it and then folded it all into her kimono and just went downstairs and told the staff at front desk not to disturb him and then she left. But eventually they were going to disturb him and it was the next day at around 3pm when a maid looked into the room and saw Yoshida dead on the futon. A press release sent out by police spread like absolute wildfire. And to explain why, we kind of have to catch you up with what's been going on outside those paper-thin teahouse walls. Because while Abe Sada and Yoshida only had eyes for each other, the rest of Japan was in absolute turmoil.

This was 1936, and earlier that year, a pro-Emperor military uprising had stormed government buildings and murdered several prominent politicians. The country was also in the midst of their second war with China, and Korea was resisting occupation. Japan, just like the rest of the world, was gearing up for the mother of all conflicts. So, to a country surrounded by war, the story of what Abe Sada had done in that tea house was a pretty welcome distraction. So much so, they decided to write very, very long headlines about it. One of them goes like this, grotesque murder in Ogo Red Light district, blood characters carved in Master's

corpse, beautiful maid disappears following love tryst. It is a lot to cover in a headline. There is a lot that happens. Yes, that's true. And let's face it, if anything's going to take your mind off the war, this story will do it. The following day, the press released more details about the woman they called, An enchancingly beautiful flower of evil. Is that better than the Black Peril?

I think it might be. I think it might be. And the press revealed that Abisida had been trained as a geisha, had ties to a prominent politician. So yes, poor Ogoro's political career was over well before it began. I don't know why he thought he was going to be able to hide it. No, no, no, no, no, no. More lore details about Abe Sada and Ishida's sex marathons came out in the press over the following days. And that meant that the public only got more hysterical. Word spread about a crazed ex-geisha

running around Tokyo slicing off genitals. And the public panic about this incredibly sexually dangerous woman meant, as it always does, that there were hundreds of false sightings of Abe Sada from all over the country. One of these sightings just so happened to have been in the Ginza shopping district of Tokyo, which is a very busy place, and because somebody thought they had spotted the danger geisha on the loose, there was a public stampede. That's bonkers. It's not like they thought she had a gun. She's got a knife that they think she might cut someone's dick off and there was a public stand-up.

But sticking with the investigation, rather than all these various sightings, police discovered that after Abe Sada had left the tea house, she'd gone to see her sugar daddy, Gora Amir, one last time. Gora told police that she'd apologized profusely, though he had no idea what for. Well, for ruining your career. Yeah, because he would later realize that she was saying sorry for leading him on, stealing his money and telling everyone that he was bad at sex and totally ending his longed-for political career.

But then, at around 5.30pm on the 20th of May, two days after she'd left that hotel, the search unexpectedly came to a close. Police were doing a routine check of a hotel near Shinagawa Station. When they discovered a strange name on the register, officers asked to be shown to the room and when they got there, Sada told them who she was immediately. Now at first they didn't actually believe her, but then when she unwrapped a severed penis from her kimono, it kind of put the investigation to bed. It's quite the calling card, isn't it?

So where had she been? After she left the hotel, Abhisada went shopping for a change of clothes. And then she went off to see her sugar daddy wannabe politician, Goro Omiya, to apologize to him. We already know that. What we didn't know is what Goro Omiya had helpfully left out in his police report was that he and Abhisadha had had sex once she got there. Oh no. What difference does it make at this point? True, true. Maybe she need him.

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law and crime this is the rise and fall of getting listen to the rise and fall of getting exclusively with wondering plus. Later that same day, Abisada checked into a second hotel in Shinagawa under a fake name. There she got a massage, drank some beers, and then she fell asleep and decided that she was going to take her own life. To do so she would travel up to Kansai and jump off a cliff on Mount Ikoma. Naturally, with

a sheeda's penis in her hand, she wasn't leaving that behind for someone else to pick up. She spent the rest of the following day writing farewell letters. And when she was done with her correspondence, she did what you probably have been waiting for her to do, to be honest. I didn't. Why? Even after a decade doing this, I didn't even think that what you're about to say next is what she was going to do. Did not think that was what was coming next. Yeah. Well. I've just read ahead in the script.

And I mean, obviously the case that leaps to mind is Lorena Bobbitt, but Lorena Bobbitt did absolutely no such thing. No. Because what Abishada did is that she attempted to have sex with the severed penis and she put it in her mouth as well. Bit more Ed Kemper. Reverse Ed Kemper maybe? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

But before she could really get going, the police arrived and there is a very famous photo of Abhisada minutes after she is arrested and I would invite you to have a look. Not asked, mate. Not asked mate, not asked at all. No one in this picture is asked. What am I looking at? What am I looking at? This is bonkers. But she doesn't look like dissociated or like worried or even in some sort of like state where she's not really there. She knows exactly what she's just done and she doesn't care.

Chill as fuck. Why are all the police officers smiling? Why is everyone in this picture smiling? That I don't know. That I can't explain. Like they are, it's not even just like an awkward smile of like, or a relieved smile. Like we caught her, whatever. They're positively jolly in this picture. It's very, very strange. It is quite odd. Maybe the police are like, this is my 15 minutes. I'm going to hang this picture in my house. I want to be smiling. Maybe. Or you know, she is an ex-Gayser. Maybe she just told them a great joke or something. I don't know. They are having a fucking great time.

It would have to be a pretty good joke. Watch me make this penis disappear. I don't know. That's fucking horrible. Anyway, the next day, Abe Sada was interrogated and asked why she had killed Ishida. To which she said, I loved him so much, I wanted him all to myself. But since we were not husband and wife, as long as he lived, he could be embraced by other women. But I knew that if I killed him, no other woman could ever touch him again. As for why she cut his cock and balls off, she said, they were the dearest and most important part of him.

Since I couldn't take his head or body, I wanted to take the part of him that brought I couldn't take his head or body, I wanted to take the part of him that brought back the most vivid memories." A head is more difficult to smuggle out of a hotel in a kimono, one would argue. Yes, very much so. Plus, she also added, she did it so his wife could never touch it again. I don't know that his wife was going to touch his dead penis, but sure. Yeah. And Abeisada also told police that when she killed Ishida,

it seemed that he became a part of her. And she felt relieved. By this point, she was already a household name around Japan. But it was this sentiment, essentially, that made her a superstar. William Johnston wrote a book called Geisha Harlet Strangler Star about Abe Sada's life. Tinker-tailer soldier spy. Quite. And he suggests in this book that what made Abe Sada so fascinating to the Japanese public was that she had killed not out of jealousy, but out of love. I would

argue that she did kill out of jealousy. I don't think that she didn't kill out of jealousy. She's quite clear about it. She's not like mysterious in her reasoning. Yeah. She's like, I don't want any other man, woman to fucking touch him and cut his penis off. I would say that's a touch of the green-eyed monster. And it also probably added to the public's obsession with Abe Sada because her detailed confession in which she admitted to everything was later published in full. And it actually became a bestseller in Japan. All sorts of 1930s psychoanalysts had a go at making sense

of what Abisada did. They talked about the four major perversions, which are sadism, masochism, fetishism, and nymphomania. And we've got another psychoanalyst focused on the penis slicing, because why wouldn't you, psychoanalysts, penis obsessed, quite famously. And he wanted to know whether it was out of a desire to control Ashida, which again, this seems quite obvious. A lot of other analysts thought about Abhi Ashida's mother spoiling her too much as a child and therefore raising a delinquent. But then there were others who said that it was just an example of love taken to an extreme. Those are all quite old and timey as I'm sure you can gather because

they're not particularly in-depth or interesting. More recently, psychoanalysts have said that Abisado might actually have been experiencing a full psychotic episode. But we're not totally sure. Psychotic breaks are defined by a total disassociation from reality or an unshakable belief in something that's untrue like Saruti's boyfriend Richard Chase thinking he was a vampire etc. So that means hallucinations, extreme mental confusion and sudden inexplicable actions that only make sense within the world of the delusion but I don't really think that's what happened. Abisada knew exactly what she was doing.

Yeah, she reminds me a lot more of like, Armin Mivis, all right? Oh, absolutely, yeah. And I'm not just saying because of the penis slicing. If you guys don't remember that case, we covered it years and years ago. And it is of course, God, he had so many names, the butcher of whatever. Anyway, he was the German guy, the German cannibal, who found brand builders or something like that. The other guy, the victim, online invited him to his house and then they decided they were going to cut off and eat his penis together.

Horrifying stuff. Go check out our episode on that, wherever it may be. And it was that desire, right, of Armin Mivis who wanted to possess this other person completely, wanted to consume him, wanted him to be a part of him. He'd suffered with loneliness as a child. He'd always been alone and he, he basically couldn't deal with this idea of this other person leaving him and he wanted in any way to feel like he could just keep him with him forever. I'm

not saying it's the exact same thing, but that is kind of what comes to mind going through this story. No, I think a bit of a difference, but I believe you totally. And I agree. The difference I would say is that Armand Mibus didn't really care who the person was. He just didn't want to be alone. It didn't matter who the person was, whereas Abhishek really cared who the person was. True. And also we've got the premeditation. I don't know whether that would specifically, on its own, cancel out psychotic delusion.

No. She does describe herself as being clear-minded and also she had a plan to kill herself afterwards because she couldn't see a way forward and she decided to end it in the only way that she thought was amenable. So unsurprisingly, at trial, Abeisado pleaded guilty. She was convicted of second-degree murder and with the mutilation of a corpse. She testified that although she'd had sex with many men in her life, her victim was her first true love. She said that she'd become obsessed with controlling him,

the way a man controls a woman. She said that murder was the only way to monopolize him, and that's the best translation of the word that she used that we could find. Now the court did cite a disassociation with reality and recognized her as insane. Abe Sada was actually hoping for the death penalty. The prosecution was hoping for at least 10 years. She was sentenced to a classically Japanese shockingly low term of just six years. In prison, Abe Sada received more than 10,000 fan letters and several marriage proposals.

In 1940, the Emperor issued a large-scale amnesty to celebrate the 2,600th anniversary of the Japanese Empire. And as a part of that celebration, Abisada had the final year of her, already quite short sentence, commuted entirely. So after five years, Abisada was released from prison in 1941. Commuting sentences in a celebration of an anniversary is clutching at straws, isn't it? Especially for a crime like this. It's not like you're letting go of people who have like, I don't know, spoken out against the emperor and you're showing all this mercy or something. Like, she killed a guy and cut his penis off. Why did she need to get out?

Was she the only person imprisoned in Japan? Anyway, during the war, for obvious reasons and censorship also, Abe Sada's story disappeared for a while. There was quite a lot of other shit going on. But in the years after the Second World War, Abe Sada once again rose to cultural obsession status in Japan. A bidding war flared up over the kimono she was wearing on the night in question, and people rushed to visit sites associated with the murder. And she was linked to what's known in Japanese folklore as dokufu, which means poisoned woman, a sexually vengeful woman who usually ends up killing her lover, which makes sense. The poisoned

woman is attractive, but dangerous, erotically charged, murderous. Every culture's got one. Cosiren, I suppose. But they're not beautiful though, that's the point. Mm, I guess alluring. Their voices are, they're gross. Yeah. And yeah, I guess some people could say maybe witches, there's something there, because they could, I don't know, glamour themselves into looking attractive to lure men in. You know, there's some sort of parallel.

I guess Cersei's one. She was fit. Yep. Tick. Unlike Europe's witch trials and the US's satanic panic, these expressions of national fear are usually based on changing demographics. And with a woman's role once again in flux, post-war Japan took this poison woman story and ran with it. Among the aristocracy, it was a horror and a disgrace. But everywhere else, in the working class especially, this story was a subject of humor, sympathy, and even admiration. A fascination with what was known as Iro-Gura swept Japan. Oh, this is what it is. This

is the thing that I was into. I just thought that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's essentially erotic, grotesque. That's kind of what it's short for. And it basically saw people turn away from the large-scale unimaginable horrors of war and delve into isolated, salacious personal stories closer to home. And Abe Sade's story was ready to be mythologized. In 1946, women got the vote in Japan. There was a surge of feminist sympathy for Abe

Sada, and she was recast as sort of a feminist hero. And the same year, the same year that women got the vote, author Angu Sagaguchi interviewed Abe Sada for a magazine, and he described her as a tender, warm figure and drove a lot more sympathy her way. The following year, another writer, Ichiro Kimura, wrote The Erotic Confessions of Abe Sada. It was based on her police interrogations and it also claimed to be written with input from Abe Sada herself. And this book did not present her as a feminist hero but rather a disturbed, perverted sadist, which

I think is a lot closer to the truth. Yeah. So Abe Sada quickly responded with her own autobiography, Memoirs of Abe Sada, in which she emphasized her love for Ishida. And this sold like hot sake. And a few years after that, Abe Sada got the acting bug. She toured the country, appearing as herself, in a one-night, one-woman stage production. When that finally died down in about 1952, she started working in a bar in downtown Tokyo as a celebrity attraction. Would I go and see her one-woman show?

Yes, I would. Sure. I would go. I would. Sure. I would see it. I would come with you. I would absolutely come with you. But when she was working at this bar in Tokyo as the quote unquote attraction, every night at 10 o'clock she would appear at the top of the stairs and clower across the room. The men would all clasp their hands over their privates and giggle to each other. Then she's just become a cuckoo clock. Yeah, basically, basically. And then, as one account put it, quote,

Above the descending Abbezadeh would mime fury, casting burning glances at those below, who squeezed and giggled the more. She slapped the banister in her wrath, and merriment rippled. After a while, Abbezadeh, however, slipped into anonymity, disappearing from the public eye in the early 70s. merriment rippled. After a while, Abe Sada however, slipped into anonymity, disappearing

from the public eye in the early 70s. But she was never gone completely. Not even now, even right now as we are recording this, there is a working porn star named after Abe Sada. And to date, at least six films have been made based on her life, the most famous of which is Oshima Nagisa's In the Realm of the Censors. Oshima had been making sexy art house films for quite a while through the 60s, but he'd always been held back by Japan's famously very strict censorship. But then he went to the French to solve his problem. He went to Cannes and

he met French filmmaker Anatole Daumann. Daumann convinced Oshima that they should make a French slash Japanese joint production and go all out sex-wise. And the film in the realm of the censors contains quite a significant amount of unsimulated sex between the actors. But it was enormously critically acclaimed once it was edited and developed overseas and is still a highly respected arthouse film. Japanese people still flock to see the censored version in cinemas, which is the only one they're allowed. And in fact, because Hawaii happens to be a very popular holiday destination for Japanese people, some Hawaiian cinemas showed in the realm of the senses on repeat every day for years.

But to this day, it has never been shown uncensored in Japan itself. Ashima claims that while he was preparing to make the film, he wanted to find out whatever had happened to Abesade. And he claims that he eventually found her at the age of 60, living in a nunnery in the Kansai countryside. Shaved head and everything. And she had dedicated her life to spiritual pursuits. And that is the last reported sighting of Abe Sada. We are pretty sure she died in that nunnery, although I would say that is quite good PR for your film.

Yeah, I'm also like, a nunnery? I don't believe she stopped shagging. Don't believe it for a second. But that's the end of the story of Japan's murderous geisha and poison woman, Abe Sada. So let's end this episode with what's the deal with Japanese sexuality today? Well, like we said at the start, half of women and a quarter of men aged 16 to 24 are apparently not interested in or despise sexual contact. More than 40% of Japanese people aged 18 to 34 are still virgins. Japan's already got one of the lowest birth rates in the world and if 18 to 34 year olds

are not fucking then that is definitely going to fall some predict by as much as another third. Japan's Institute of Population and Social Security reports an astonishing 90% of young women believe that staying single is quote, preferable to what they imagine marriage to be like. And I can tell you what they imagine marriage to be like. It's really not that far off salary man and stay at home wife thing that's been around for almost ever. Japanese legislation has been slow to catch up with the modern

world. That is a fact. The World Economic Forum consistently ranks Japan as one of the worst nations for gender equality at work. A lack of maternity and daycare options essentially mean that most women get pregnant and then they have to resign. They have no choice. 70% of Japanese women leave their jobs after having their first child. And even then, post-recession, having children can be impossible in a single-income household. So, on the other side, many men picture themselves working every spare minute of every day so they have just enough to drum up and support their family at home.

And in a culture where casual no-strings-dating is a lot less common than it is here in the West, many young people drop sex altogether because it might lead to a long-term relationship they might not be able to get out of. As for laws around sexual assault, change is slow. Victims know that the police and courts largely don't want to get involved. There's a culture of endurance and stoicism, and an unwillingness to disrupt social harmony that all combines to silence victims. And many victims, if they do report any sort of sexual assault in Japan, usually leave a lot unsaid.

A government survey found that just 14% of victims of sexual assault in Japan reported the crime. So the statistics for sexual assault do remain incredibly low. Plus, sexual abuse is also not spoken about in the media, neither on the news nor in TV drama storylines, so it's just not that visible. But there is hope. Last year, just like in France, the definition of rape in Japan was officially changed.

Previously, it only included non-consensual penetrative sex involving violence or intimidation. The new definition allows cases of drugging, intimidation and psychological manipulation. It's still short of international standards, but it is definitely a start. Depressing. Oh no. I've seen out of countries like Japan and Korea this, like, we've spoken about this in Under the Duvet in sort of relation to 4B and I'm not comparing Japan and Korea because

they're very different places, but like they are experiencing a similar phenomenon where the government's answer to the perilously low birth rate has been all of these pronatal policies where like, oh, well you'll get a tax break if you have this many children or like that's not the answer. The answer is make it possible for women to go back to work if they want to. Like that is what you should be doing. You shouldn't just be like, have more babies, stay in the house. Yeah, no. And we've seen that backfire in other countries as well. Sweden very famously tried to introduce all of these very, very pro-natal policies. And basically it was about

offering the women all of these benefits if they had children. But actually what happened is it just made women who were in their 30s who haven't had children yet completely unemployable because the companies are like, I don't want to fucking hire you because I know you will have a child in the next 10 years and I'll be fucked. So it's, you know, it's a difficult situation. And you know, coming back to Abe Sada as a case, it's a really, really fascinating story because not only is it set against that backdrop of like the sexual oppression versus that kind of real strangeness to sex in Japan. It's also probably one of the cases I would say where it is a woman committing

very very traditionally masculine crimes like her mentality, her behavior, the grotesqueness of it, the violence of it, the brutality. You know we don't typically see these things in crimes perpetrated by women. And yeah, here you go. She ticks all the boxes and some. So a lot. There's a knee in your crotch for everybody at home. Hey man, I'm just enlightening the people. I'm here for it.

I'm here for it. So yeah, that is the case of our base. And hopefully a bit more of an understanding in, you know, the barest of bones that we can do about geisha and what exactly that means and what it doesn't mean. And yeah, that's our little trip to Japan for today. Goodbye. Arigato. you