Sada Abe - Acquaintance With Kichizo Ishida

Acquaintance With Kichizo Ishida

Back in Tokyo, Abe began work as an apprentice at the Yoshidaya on February 1, 1936. The owner of this establishment, Kichizo Ishida, 42 at the time, had worked his way up in business, starting as an apprentice at a restaurant specializing in eel dishes. He had opened the Yoshidaya in Tokyo's Nakano neighborhood in 1920. When Abe joined his restaurant, Ishida had become known as a womanizer who by that time did little in the way of actually running the restaurant, which had become in fact managed primarily by his wife.

Not long after Abe began work at Yoshidaya, Ishida began making amorous advances towards her. Omiya had never satisfied Abe sexually, and she gave in to Ishida. In mid-April, Ishida and Abe initiated their sexual relationship in the restaurant to the accompaniment of a romantic ballad sung by one of the restaurant's geishas. On April 23, 1936 Abe and Ishida met for a pre-arranged sexual encounter at a teahouse, or machiai – the contemporary equivalent of a love hotel – in the Shibuya neighborhood. Planning only for a short 'fling', the couple instead remained in bed for four days. On the night of April 27, 1936, they moved to another teahouse in the distant neighborhood of Futako Tamagawa where they continued to drink and have sex, occasionally with the accompaniment of a geisha's singing, and would continue even as maids entered the room to serve sake. They next moved to the Ogu neighborhood, and Ishida did not actually return to his restaurant until the morning of May 8, 1936, after an absence of about two weeks. Of Ishida, Abe later said, "It is hard to say exactly what was so good about Ishida. But it was impossible to say anything bad about his looks, his attitude, his skill as a lover, the way he expressed his feelings. I had never met such a sexy man."

After their two-week encounter ended, Abe became agitated and began drinking excessively. She claimed that with Ishida she had come to know true love for the first time in her life, and the thought of Ishida being back with his wife made her intensely jealous. Just over a week before Ishida's eventual death, Abe began to contemplate his murder. On May 9, 1936, she attended a play in which a geisha attacks her lover with a large knife, after which she decided to threaten Ishida with a knife at their next meeting. On May 11, 1936, Abe pawned some of her clothing and used the money to buy some sushi and a kitchen knife. She later described meeting Ishida that night, "I pulled the kitchen knife out of my bag and threatened him as had been done in the play I had seen, saying, 'Kichi, you wore that kimono just to please one of your favorite customers. You bastard, I'll kill you for that.' Ishida was startled and drew away a little, but he seemed delighted with it all..."