Sada Abe - Conviction and Sentencing

Conviction and Sentencing

The first day of Abe's trial was November 25, 1936, and by 5 a.m. crowds were already gathering to attend. The judge presiding over the trial admitted to being sexually aroused by some of the details involved in the case, yet made sure that the trial was held with the utmost seriousness. Abe's statement before receiving sentencing began, "The thing I regret most about this incident is that I have come to be misunderstood as some kind of sexual pervert... There had never been a man in my life like Ishida. There were men I liked, and with whom I slept without accepting money, but none made me feel the way I did toward him."

On December 21, 1936 Abe was convicted of murder in the second degree and mutilation of a corpse. Though the prosecution demanded ten years, and Abe claimed that she desired the death penalty, she was in fact sentenced to just six years in prison. She was confined in Tochigi women's penitentiary, where she was prisoner No. 11. Abe's sentence was commuted on November 10, 1940, on the occasion of the 2,600th anniversary celebrations of the mythical founding of Japan, when Emperor Jimmu came to the throne. She was released, exactly five years after the murder, on May 17, 1941.

The police record of Abe's interrogation and confession became a national best-seller in 1936. Christine L. Marran puts the national fascination with Abe's story within the context of the dokufu or "poison woman" stereotype, a transgressive female character type which had first become popular in Japanese serialized novels and stage works in the 1870s. In the wake of the popular "poison woman" literature, confessional autobiographies by female criminals had begun appearing in the late 1890s. By the early 1910s, autobiographical writings by criminal women took on an unapologetic tone and sometimes included criticisms of Japan and Japanese society. Kanno Suga, who was hanged in 1911 for conspiring to assassinate Emperor Meiji in what was known as the High Treason Incident, wrote openly rebellious essays while in prison. Fumiko Kaneko, who was sentenced to death for plotting to bomb the imperial family, used her notoriety to speak against the imperial system and the racism and paternalism which she said it engendered. Abe's confession, in the years since its appearance, became the most circulated female criminal narrative in Japan. Marran points out that Abe, unlike previous criminal autobiographers, stressed her sexuality and the love she felt for her victim.