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SPEAKER_01: Hey, it's Jenny. We're currently gearing up for a brand new season of Womanica. Until then, we're bringing you our favorite episodes featuring villains, troublemakers, magic, and mystery in honor of October. Tune in next month for a month of peace builders. Now, onto the episode. Before we get started, just a warning that this episode contains some mentions of violence. Hello, from Wonder Media Network, I'm Jenny Kaplan and this is Womanica. This episode was originally aired in our troublemakers month in October of 2021. Today we're talking about a woman who committed a passionate murder and captured the imagination of Japan. Her story has inspired generations of artists who saw her as a transgressor fighting against an oppressive society. We're talking about Sara Abe. Sara Abe was born in May 1905 in Tokyo, Japan to middle class parents. She was the youngest of seven children, all but three of whom died during childhood. At that point in time, Japanese society still put considerable stock in the gender norms of the former feudal caste system in which women were expected to play a subservient or secondary role. Sara's older brother, Shintaro, was a well-known ladies man who was constantly stealing from the family to pay for his lavish lifestyle. This their parents mostly tolerated. But when Sara's older sister, Teruko, was accused of promiscuity, their father sold Teruko into indentured servitude in a licensed brothel. There, Teruko languished for two years until their father bought her out of her remaining contract. This was apparently a common punishment for daughters of the middle class who went astray. When Sara was 14, she was sexually assaulted by an acquaintance. Though her family was initially supportive, society in general was not. And the trauma and subsequent depression eventually led Sara to drop out of school. She found work as a maid but was accused of theft, leading to her first run-in with the police. Fed up with yet another wayward daughter as he saw it, Sara's father arranged to sell Sara into service in a geisha house in Yokohama. At 17 years old, Sara was too old to become a full geisha, as geisha training generally began in the early teen years. Still, she was popular with clients. Three or four years later, at the age of 21, Sara contracted syphilis. The disease was incurable at the time, but Sara was legally allowed to continue working as a geisha as long as she submitted to regular health checks. These health checks were generally only required of state licensed sex workers known as shogis and not geisha, who weren't explicitly sex workers. When Sara realized she now faced the same requirements as shogis but for less pay, she decided to leave the geisha house and join their ranks. Unfortunately, Sara quickly learned that shogis earned more but their lives were much worse. Shogis didn't have the protections geishas did and were subject to significantly more brutality. Sara took out her revenge on disrespectful clients by stealing from them, but was eventually caught and punished. Following her punishment, Sara attempted to get out of sex work, but the brothel owner soon tracked her down and dragged her back to finish out her contract. In 1932, Sara's contract with the brothel finally ended. She decided to remain in the sex industry as an illegal unlicensed sex worker known as a shisho. This allowed her to pick her own clients and gave her much more control over her life. That same year, Sara's mother died and Sara traveled back to Tokyo for the funeral, where she reconciled with her father. She decided to move back to Tokyo full time in order to be closer to him. Two years later, he fell ill and Sara nursed him through his final days. A few years later, Sara moved to Nagoya, where she got a job as a maid in a local restaurant. There, she had an affair with the restaurant's owner, who convinced her that opening a restaurant of her own would allow her control over her life. In 1936, Sara moved back to Tokyo to take a job as an apprentice in a restaurant called the Yoshidaya. The head chef and owner, a notorious womanizer named Ishida Kichizo, quickly convinced Sara to begin an affair with him. Almost immediately, the two became deeply infatuated with each other and spent nearly two weeks straight together in a local hotel. When Kichizo finally had to leave to check on the restaurant, Sara was distraught. She drank heavily and went to a play to distract herself. The play, called New Tales of the Erotic, featured a scene in which a geisha kills her lover with a knife to prevent him from leaving. According to Sara, she was deeply affected by the scene. The next day, she went to a hardware store and bought a large knife of her own. When Kichizo returned to Sara three days later, she introduced the knife as a prop for erotic foreplay. The two then began experimenting with erotic asphyxiation using the sash from Sara's kimono. Sara and Kichizo spent the next week together in a hotel, with Sara becoming increasingly infatuated with her new lover. On the eighth day of their sojourn, Kichizo told Sara more about his home life, particularly about his children and how much he loved them. The conversation led Sara to realize that Kichizo was deeply devoted to his family and would never leave them to start a new life with her. That night, while Kichizo slept, Sara strangled him to death with her kimono sash. She then fell asleep beside him. When she woke up the next morning, she cut his genitals off with the knife, left a message that read, Sara and Ishida Kichizo are alone, and then fled. When Kichizo's body was found the next morning, the story immediately became front page news. Sara's body was found in a place called the Kichizo's. Sara's body became front page news, and the police started a highly publicized manhunt for Sara. Sara suddenly became the real-life embodiment of many of Japanese society's greatest fears surrounding women and their slowly expanding place in society, particularly with regard to the perceived dangers of unbridled female sexuality. People across Japan reported sightings of Sara. One mistaken sighting in a Tokyo shopping mall led to a stampede and mass panic. But Sara hadn't left the city. She was holed up in another hotel under a false name. Sara's arrest was highly publicized. She immediately confessed to the police, and her highly detailed confession was quickly transcribed and published, becoming a nationwide bestseller. Sara was sentenced to six years in prison for second-degree murder and mutilation of a corpse. She was released in 1941. Following World War II, Japanese society was in complete disarray. Many of the social norms that had governed Japan for centuries began to disintegrate. One major component of this was the advent of greater rights, freedoms, and empowerment for women, including finally getting the vote in 1946. This social realignment also led to a revisiting of Sara's case. People then developed a more nuanced view of Sara. Rather than seeing her as pure villain, they also saw her as a victim of male exploitation and deteriorating mental health. Writers of the period, including Sakaguchi Ango, cast her as a sort of feminist hero. In 1947, a novel called The Erotic Confessions of Abe Sara was released. The book portrayed Sara as an erotic sadist and was based on her confessions to police. In response, Sara published her own memoirs, and they became immediate bestsellers. She then spent several years touring around Japan in a play based on her life and crime. For the next few decades, Sara's story continued to inspire new films, plays, and books, including two famous 1970s arthouse films called A Woman Called Sara Abe and In the Realm of the Senses. The last recorded sighting of Sara was in 1971. By that time, she was in her late 60s, living as a Buddhist nun in the Japanese countryside. All month, we're bringing you the best of villainy, magic, and mystery. Tune in tomorrow for another of our favorite episodes. Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. Talk to you tomorrow.
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