Sada Abe (阿部 定; Abe Sada, 1905 - after 1970) is famous in Japan for a bizarre occurrence in 1936. Even today, the name Sada Abe tends to send a chill down the spine of many Japanese men.
On May 18 of that year, Sada Abe erotically asphyxiated her lover, Kichizo Ishida, during sex at the hotel he owned. She was employed in his household following her "retirement" from prostitution, and the two had become increasingly isolated in their own private world of sexual passion, jealousy and experimentation. After his death, Sada cut off his penis and testicles, and wrapped them in paper. She wandered the streets of Tokyo for three days with his severed parts in her hand. When she was apprehended on May 21, she was reported to be 'beaming with happiness.' Her story garnered her a great deal of sympathy in Japan, and became the story of the year, and one of Japan's most notorious scandals.
She was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. The sentence was commuted, however, in 1940, on the occasion of the celebration of the 2,600th year after Emperor Jimmu came to the throne. She then assumed an alias and later remarried, but her husband divorced her when he discovered her identity. Later she became an actress, portraying herself in several productions about the 1936 incident. Sada Abe disappeared in 1970 and her subsequent whereabouts are unknown.
There have been at least three movies detailing her life, notably In the Realm of the Senses which was widely banned following its 1976 release, for nearly constant sex and nudity. Noboru Tanaka's A Woman Called Sada Abe came out the year before, for a Japan-only audience, but was overshadowed by its more explicit successor. More recently, Nobuhiko Obayashi's Sada (1998) however treats the Sada story with a more artistic nature.
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