﻿In most modern societies and cultures, cannibalism, or the act of humans consuming
other humans, is generally looked down upon and ostracized. However, in the case, we’ll
be covering today, a particular cannibal in Japan was hoisted up to the ranks of the rich and famous
simply due to the public’s fascination with social taboos. The cannibal in question is Issei Sagawa,
also known as the Kobe Cannibal, the son of a wealthy businessman who eventually became
a cannibal, murderer, and necrophile before using a legal loophole to avoid jail time
and use his sordid reputation to attain notoriety and international publicity.
Issei Sagawa was born in Kobe, Hyogo Prefecture on April 26th, 1949. Issei was blessed enough to
be born into a wealthy family, with his father being the successful businessman Akira Sagawa
who was the president of Kurita Water Industries, and his grandfather being a very successful
editor for The Asahi Shimbun. While he may have been lucky when it came to his family,
Issei’s actual birth was incredibly rough, with him being born prematurely which caused him to
be abnormally small, reportedly small enough to fit into the palm of his father’s hand.
Not only this, but he would go on to develop a disease known as enteritis,
which caused inflammation of the small intestine and intense abdominal pain, however,
he was able to make a recovery after receiving multiple potassium and calcium injections,
but it is likely that his illness and smaller stature helped contribute to his introverted
personality. According to Issei himself, his childhood was phenomenal and without worry,
spending his carefree youth surrounded by a pair of loving parents and the joys of nature.
Issei’s cannibalistic urges didn’t wait long to take hold after he discovered the concept
in a fairytale. Following this, he began to have nightmares that involved himself and his
younger brother being boiled alive in a big pot and eaten, but it wasn’t long before he
began to imagine himself as the chef in the dream, and the fear of cannibalism morphed
into fascination. His first actual urge to eat another human being arrived while
he was in the first grade after seeing “...the quivering meat on a male classmate’s thighs…”,
after which he thought to himself “...mmm, that looks delicious…”. Despite his first cannibalistic
desire being towards another man, Issei knew he wasn’t homosexual, and eventually would make
the horrid discovery after watching a Grace Kelly film at a young age that his cannibalistic “type”
were white women with blonde hair and blue eyes. Issei grew up in a sheltered household and knew
nothing of these more primal human instincts, so when these desires cropped up he had no clue what
they were or how to deal with them, and according to Issei, this caused him to experiment in taboo
ways such as participating in bestiality with the family dog and imagining and associating
cannibalism with sexual desire and pleasure. Keeping his desires hidden for his child and
teenage years, no one was ever suspicious of anything wrong with him, and little attention was
paid to keeping an eye on him. In 1972, at around 23 years old, Issei was attending Wako University
in Tokyo where he chose to pursue an interest in literature, while also taking classes in German.
One night while out walking he was passed by a beautiful German woman and was so overcome by
the desire to eat her that he chose at that moment to follow her home and eat her. He
watched her walk to her apartment where he later broke into by climbing in through the window.
The woman had gone to sleep by that point, giving Issei the freedom to search around for a weapon,
and he eventually settled on an umbrella although it’s unclear what his plan for
using that actually was. As he approached the bed the woman thankfully woke up and screamed,
causing Issei to make a break out the door however he was swiftly caught by patrolling policemen who
were alerted by the scream. Issei had been caught early in his crime, leading authorities to charge
him with an attempted rape charge as no one knew what his true intentions really were, and
Issei made sure to keep his mouth tightly shut. According to Issei, he never planned on murdering
the woman and simply wanted to cut off pieces of her body to eat and sneak away without alerting
her. In what would tragically become a recurring theme in Issei’s life, he faced no consequences
for his disgusting plan as his father Akira paid the German woman off and promised to send Issei
to therapy, allowing Issei to get away without a mark on his record or any jail time.
Akira Sagawa at least made good on his promise and sent Issei to therapy, where he finally admitted
to another human being for the first time that he craved human flesh. Issei’s therapist, reasonably
disturbed by this confession, attempted to mark Issei as a high-risk individual and get him the
help he so evidently needed, however before this could happen Akira once again stepped in.
Embarrassed by the idea of having people know his son was deeply troubled, Akira instead arranged
to have Issei temporarily exiled to Paris, France where he would continue to study literature. Issei
was swiftly enrolled in Sorbonne University and left for Paris on his 28th birthday.
According to Issei, by this point, his mind was wholly consumed with the desire to eat a woman,
and his “...desire to eat a woman had changed into an obligation.” Apparently while staying in Paris,
issei would bring a prostitute home with him every single night and attempt to shoot them, however,
every night his finger froze and he wasn’t able to bring himself to kill them. This resistance
was well on its way to disappearing. While attending school in Paris Issei became
friends with a Dutch woman named Renee Hartevelt, and according to him, the two had a genuine and
deep friendship. On June 11th, 1981, Issei invited his classmate and supposed “genuine
friend” over to his apartment under the guise of working together to translate poetry for class,
as well as eating dinner. However, unbeknownst to Renee, Issei had decided she was what he
was having for dinner. Over the course of their friendship, Issei had become totally enraptured
by Renee and planned on eating her to absorb her energy and gain characteristics in her that
he felt he lacked, such as strength, beauty, and charisma. In later interviews with Issei,
he said that he hadn’t necessarily intended to kill Renee that night, claiming a glass
of her bodily fluids or a “nibble on her pubic hair” would have been enough to satiate him,
but he had been too nervous to ask. After arriving at the apartment on that fateful night,
Renee sat at a desk and began to read poetry into a tape recorder with her back facing Issei.
Issei then took this opportunity to shoot her in the back of the neck with a rifle,
the shock of which caused him to faint. After waking up from his stupor Issei realized he had
passed the point of no return, and began to carry out his sick and twisted plans. First,
Issei slept with Renee’s corpse, before attempting to bite directly into her right buttock. At this
point, Issei made the discovery that his teeth weren’t sharp enough to break through human skin,
and he had to leave the apartment in order to purchase a butcher knife that could get the job
done. Upon returning home he began to cut up the defiled corpse, stating later that “...no matter
how deep I cut, all I saw was the fat beneath the skin. It looked like corn, and it took a while to
actually reach the red meat. The moment I saw the meat, I tore a chunk off with my fingers
and threw it into my mouth.” This gruesome process continued over the following two days with Issei
repeatedly raping, mutilating, and eating the body, all the while listening to a recording
Renee was making as he shot her, reliving his poor victim’s last moment over and over again.
Issei ate most pieces from the body raw but did actually fry and season some pieces, as well as
store some away in his freezer. Eventually, Issei realized he needed to get rid of Renee’s body,
and began the process by cutting up what remained of the corpse with a hatchet before wrapping it
in cloth and stuffing it into two suitcases. As he packed away the evidence of his crime
Issei took a moment to lift up Renee’s now decapitated head by the hair, at which point
the reality of what he had done finally settled in and Issei realized he was finally a true cannibal.
Taking the suitcases in hand, issei hailed a taxi and rode it to the nearby Boise de Boulogne park
with the intention of discreetly throwing the suitcases into an out-of-the-way bush.
Unfortunately for Issei, his small stature made it difficult for him to carry the bags, and he
attracted the attention of all of the other park goers as he dragged the two bags through the park,
especially when the bottoms of the suitcases began leaking and dripping blood.
Realizing the jig was up and the cops would soon be notified, Issei decided to just drop the bags
and run as fast as he could back to his apartment where he planned on eating as much of the human
meat in his freezer as much as he could before his arrest. Two days after the body was discovered in
the park the police raided through Issei’s apartment, where they found copious amounts
of meat still in the freezer. Issei immediately confessed to the authorities, apparently telling
them “I killed her to eat her.”. Following his arrest, Issei waited in custody for two years
while awaiting trial before the judge overseeing the cases declared that anyone willing to kill,
mutilate, and eat another human being was mentally unwell and not capable of standing trial,
instead of sending him to reside indefinitely at a French mental health institution. Once again,
Issei’s father Akira refused to let Issei be the stain that ruined their families image,
and he negotiated to have Issei transferred to Japan, where issei would have been detained
except that documents pertaining to Issei’s case were sealed by French authorities and not
released to the Japanese Police, allowing Issei to squeeze through a legal loophole
and check himself out the mental institution and return to his home country as a free man.
Issei capitalized on his disgusting crime and obsession in order to make money,
signing a publishing deal to release memoirs he had written while institutionalized, starring in
several pornographic videos alongside women who were not informed of his background beforehand,
being featured in a Japanese exploitation film, writing a manga about Renee’s murder,
being featured on multiple day-time talk shows and cooking shows, and even being hired to leave
food reviews for select restaurants. Issei talks openly and publicly about the “joys” of eating
human flesh and encourages society to become more accepting of it, and even goes so far as to claim
that he plans on consuming another human being again before he dies. What are your thoughts on
the case? Do you think Issei should be rearrested? Let us know down in the comments and be sure to
tell us about any other cases you’d like us to cover. If you enjoyed this video and found
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