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Asia Perspectives: History, Society, and Culture
Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan
In May 1936, Abe Sada committed the most notorious crime in twentieth-century Japan -- the murder and emasculation of her lover. What made her do it? And why was she found guilty of murder yet sentenced to only six years in prison? Why have this woman and her crime remained so famous for so long, and what does her fame have to say about attitudes toward sex and sexuality in modern Japan?
Despite Abe Sada's notoriety and the depictions of her in film and fiction (notably in the classic "In the Realm of the Senses"), until now, there have been no books written in English that examine her life and the forces that pushed her to commit the crime. Along with a detailed account of Sada's personal history, the events leading up to the murder, and its aftermath, this book contains transcripts of the police interrogations after her arrest -- one of the few existing first-person records of a woman who worked in the Japanese sex industry during the 1920s and 1930s -- as well as a memoir by the judge and police records.
"Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star" steps beyond the simplistic view of Abe Sada as a sexual deviate or hysterical woman to reveal a survivor of rape, a career as a geisha and a prostitute, and a prison sentence for murder. Sada endured discrimination and hounding by paparazzi until her disappearance in 1970. Her story illustrates a historical collision of social and sexual values -- those of the samurai class and imported from Victorian Europe against those of urban and rural Japanese peasants.
272 pages, Hardcover
First published October 20, 2004
2 people are currently reading
151 people want to read
About the author
William Johnston
2 books1 followerLibrarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
William Johnston is Professor of History at Wesleyan University. He earned a BA from Elmira College, a MA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
William Johnston is Professor of History at Wesleyan University. He earned a BA from Elmira College, a MA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 1, 2018
An interesting read that I devoured in less than a day, and a good introduction to the Sada Abe phenomenon. The author's sanctimonious tone can be wearying, however, despite his attempts at objectivity. We get it dude, nobody understands Sada Abe like you do. Everyone else who has ever broached the subject has been wrong. Anyway, I can't possibly hate any writer who throws out gems like "phallocentric hegemony," so I'd still recommend this little book.
October 17, 2023
Japanese cultural mores take up a large portion of this story. A thirty-one-year old prostitute strangled her married lover and then cut off his "extremity." The court could not use the word penis. One of the doctors assigned to the case diagnosed the young lady with "sexual oversensitivity," or, "nymphomania."
Abe Sada was raped by a student at fifteen and she became a promiscuous teenager. Her father had previously sold her older sister to a licensed brothel and then sent Abe to a geisha training school. As a lower-level geisha, she hooked up with countless partners and worked as a hooker up until the time of the murders.
She killed her married employer in a fit of jealous rage. He refused to leave his wife and so Ms. Sade solved her dilemma by ending his days on earth and cutting off his valuable manhood. She claimed that he was the only man capable of satisfying her sexually and she proved it by carrying his private parts in a sack. Along the way, she placed the wiener in her mouth and unsuccessfully attempted intercourse with the item.
Three judges had the option of sentencing Abe to the gallows but instead gave her six years in prison. They believed that she was in state of mental weakness at the time of the murder.
Long transcripts of Abe's police interviews take up the second half of the book and only repeats information from earlier chapters. Nothing was found about the final years of her life and I do not recommend Johnston's book.
Abe Sada was raped by a student at fifteen and she became a promiscuous teenager. Her father had previously sold her older sister to a licensed brothel and then sent Abe to a geisha training school. As a lower-level geisha, she hooked up with countless partners and worked as a hooker up until the time of the murders.
She killed her married employer in a fit of jealous rage. He refused to leave his wife and so Ms. Sade solved her dilemma by ending his days on earth and cutting off his valuable manhood. She claimed that he was the only man capable of satisfying her sexually and she proved it by carrying his private parts in a sack. Along the way, she placed the wiener in her mouth and unsuccessfully attempted intercourse with the item.
Three judges had the option of sentencing Abe to the gallows but instead gave her six years in prison. They believed that she was in state of mental weakness at the time of the murder.
Long transcripts of Abe's police interviews take up the second half of the book and only repeats information from earlier chapters. Nothing was found about the final years of her life and I do not recommend Johnston's book.
May 31, 2023
Hard to follow
It was intriguing but extremely hard to follow. He bounced ball and forth, which was confusing because you had a hard time. There would be the sorry then Japanese history then the story the history... Then it would repeat things that hit confusing too. Honestly, it felt disorganized. Not like a book but was it you were having a conversation with someone with ADHD during a concert was you were watching a movie and having someone cleaning directly in front of you.
It was intriguing but extremely hard to follow. He bounced ball and forth, which was confusing because you had a hard time. There would be the sorry then Japanese history then the story the history... Then it would repeat things that hit confusing too. Honestly, it felt disorganized. Not like a book but was it you were having a conversation with someone with ADHD during a concert was you were watching a movie and having someone cleaning directly in front of you.
December 20, 2011
William Johnston's book Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan (2004) is a fascinating book in several ways. Sada Abe's story is extremely famous and has been written about many many times since it occurred in 1936. Most of my knowledge comes from Nagisa Oshima's film, In The Realm Of The Senses (1976). It is a enthralling analysis of Abe's life history, observations about modern Japanese society, and police interrogations and justice. It seems that she was spoiled by her parents early. And later in her adolescence she was turned out of the house while they were fighting with her older siblings about the legacy of the family tatami mat making business. At this time she suffered rape from an acquaintance in her neighborhood who was older and went to Waseda. She told her mother who approached the family who refused to acknowledge the incident. Abe suffered from this thinking that she could not lead a conventional since she was no longer a virgin and wouldn't be considered marriage material despite her mother's advice to forget about and not disclose this information. She started to steal money from her parents and hangout with a bad crowd and looking for fun in Asakusa. Later after they moved to Saitama, she took up with a neighbor and was living fast, so her father decided to sell her to a brothel-supposedly to let her get it out of her system then have her return to the family. Johnston states that this was a common practice among middle class families with wild daughters, which seems absolutely shocking to me. This was a turning point for Abe, who vowed to never return to her family after this.
The life she lead after this was dizzily chaotic life of going from one brothel to another getting large loans that have to be paid back, escapes from exploitative tea houses, tawdry affairs, and the contraction of syphilis at different times throughout her life. She finally tries to go straight, but is unable to for a number of reasons: lack of education, a taste for high living, exploitation by others, her high sex drive, etc. The whole system of running up high bills and escaping or paying a fraction seems inefficient and unlikely to me. At the point she has run off with the man she would kill, Kichi Ishida, she is getting her money from a kindly City Hall official from Nagoya. All of her many dealings with men suggest that most of them were keeping mistresses and/or playing around, and many wives were tolerating this or turning a blind eye-perhaps due to the lack of "love marriages" and the dearth of arranged marriages? Essentially, she was obsessed with Ishida whom she found irresistible and wanted to dominate/control him and stop him from having sex with other women or his wife and be hers alone. They were engaging in rough sex by strangling each other during climax for a more intense effect-has this been done since the karma sutra? This led to her strangling Ishida. Then she severed his genitals after strangling him as a sort of memento. There would be no question of double suicide or running off together-his wife ran a prosperous restaurant in Nakano and he had two children. The police testimony is a fascinating document that Johnston draws from and has included in its full form. She is given an eight year sentence and is dogged continually about the incident until she disappears from public view. The genitals of Ishida were given to university and also mysteriously disappeared. It is easy to se how this story has captured the attentions of millions since its occurrence.
The life she lead after this was dizzily chaotic life of going from one brothel to another getting large loans that have to be paid back, escapes from exploitative tea houses, tawdry affairs, and the contraction of syphilis at different times throughout her life. She finally tries to go straight, but is unable to for a number of reasons: lack of education, a taste for high living, exploitation by others, her high sex drive, etc. The whole system of running up high bills and escaping or paying a fraction seems inefficient and unlikely to me. At the point she has run off with the man she would kill, Kichi Ishida, she is getting her money from a kindly City Hall official from Nagoya. All of her many dealings with men suggest that most of them were keeping mistresses and/or playing around, and many wives were tolerating this or turning a blind eye-perhaps due to the lack of "love marriages" and the dearth of arranged marriages? Essentially, she was obsessed with Ishida whom she found irresistible and wanted to dominate/control him and stop him from having sex with other women or his wife and be hers alone. They were engaging in rough sex by strangling each other during climax for a more intense effect-has this been done since the karma sutra? This led to her strangling Ishida. Then she severed his genitals after strangling him as a sort of memento. There would be no question of double suicide or running off together-his wife ran a prosperous restaurant in Nakano and he had two children. The police testimony is a fascinating document that Johnston draws from and has included in its full form. She is given an eight year sentence and is dogged continually about the incident until she disappears from public view. The genitals of Ishida were given to university and also mysteriously disappeared. It is easy to se how this story has captured the attentions of millions since its occurrence.
April 11, 2015
"People have made an incredible fuss since they found out what I did, but there are lots of women who fall hopelessly in love with a man. Even if a wife doesn’t like sashimi, if her husband likes it she will naturally start to like it, too. And there are lots of wives who sleep with their husband’s pillow in their arms while he is away.
For some women the smell of the quilted kimono of the man they love might make them feel ill. But there are lots of women who think that the tea left behind by the man they love or the food he has already had in his mouth are delicious.
Just as when men redeem a geisha so that they can keep her all to themselves, there are women who are so enraptured with a man that they think of doing what I did. They just don’t act it out. There are all kinds of women. There are women who decide that it is just not possible for love to be the standard by which they measure men, and so they measure them by their material possessions. But there are women who just can’t stop loving a man. So people need to understand that when an incident like mine happens, it isn’t just because a woman is crazy about sex.”
The above quote is Abe Sada's, following the end of her lengthy police interrogation - and really, worth picking up the book alone. Johnston tries to cram several centuries worth of history into a small book, and to a varying degree, succeeds. The book reads as a collection of essays, with the same sort of abrupt end/beginning - the transitions from chapter to chapter are a little rough, and could have stood for a better editor/further proofreading. However, as a narrative of Abe Sada's life, her crime, and her motives, it's the most human thing I've read, and packs far more of an emotional punch than a scholarly one. Johnston's handling of Abe's life is a bit un-even, though some of it can be forgiven because Abe herself seems to contridict herself in her own records. I think with more page space and careful research, it could have been a great introduction to sexuality for Japan in the 1930s, but really, it's more about Abe than it's somewhat overly ambitious title.
For some women the smell of the quilted kimono of the man they love might make them feel ill. But there are lots of women who think that the tea left behind by the man they love or the food he has already had in his mouth are delicious.
Just as when men redeem a geisha so that they can keep her all to themselves, there are women who are so enraptured with a man that they think of doing what I did. They just don’t act it out. There are all kinds of women. There are women who decide that it is just not possible for love to be the standard by which they measure men, and so they measure them by their material possessions. But there are women who just can’t stop loving a man. So people need to understand that when an incident like mine happens, it isn’t just because a woman is crazy about sex.”
The above quote is Abe Sada's, following the end of her lengthy police interrogation - and really, worth picking up the book alone. Johnston tries to cram several centuries worth of history into a small book, and to a varying degree, succeeds. The book reads as a collection of essays, with the same sort of abrupt end/beginning - the transitions from chapter to chapter are a little rough, and could have stood for a better editor/further proofreading. However, as a narrative of Abe Sada's life, her crime, and her motives, it's the most human thing I've read, and packs far more of an emotional punch than a scholarly one. Johnston's handling of Abe's life is a bit un-even, though some of it can be forgiven because Abe herself seems to contridict herself in her own records. I think with more page space and careful research, it could have been a great introduction to sexuality for Japan in the 1930s, but really, it's more about Abe than it's somewhat overly ambitious title.
September 17, 2013
A few weeks ago, I was in bed sick and perusing my local library's website. I somehow ended up on the subject of Women Murderers, which is how I found this book. Apparently Abe Sada is kind of a big deal. Maybe I'd never heard of her because I'm not Japanese or too particularly interested in Japanese culture. For those unaware: Think of Abe Sada as the Japanese equivalent of Lorena Bobbit. Although unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?) Abe's victim didn't survive.
Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star is a very sympathetic look into Abe Sada's life and crime. There were times while reading when I wondered if I had stumbled upon someone's Master's thesis, it all got so technical and boring. Those instances were few and far between, however, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying the read.
One of the last sentences in the book is, "If this book has convinced the reader that Abe Sada's passions and desires were understandable in the context of her life and times, it has been successful."
Success achieved, William Johnston. Success achieved.
Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star is a very sympathetic look into Abe Sada's life and crime. There were times while reading when I wondered if I had stumbled upon someone's Master's thesis, it all got so technical and boring. Those instances were few and far between, however, and I ended up thoroughly enjoying the read.
One of the last sentences in the book is, "If this book has convinced the reader that Abe Sada's passions and desires were understandable in the context of her life and times, it has been successful."
Success achieved, William Johnston. Success achieved.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews