Issei Sagawa | The Cannibal Celebrity
One day, a little boy in Kobe, Japan had a dream. This little boy, Issei Sagawa, dreamt that he and his brother were being boiled in a pot to be eaten. He woke up the next morning and all he could think about was how it would be like to flip the script. Issei began to wonder what it would be like to eat another human rather than be eaten. This interest soon turned into an obsession.
Issei was born in a rich household. His father, Sagawa Akira was a businessman who had served as president of Kurita Water Industries and his grandfather had been an editor for The Asahi Shimbun. When Issei was in first grade, he experienced more cannibalistic desires after he saw his male classmate’s thigh. He had also partook in relations with his dog. Later in the years, when Issei was 24 years old and living in Tokyo, he followed a tall, blonde, German woman home and broke into her apartment while she was asleep. Issei’s intent was to slice off part of her body and take it to his place so he could finally fulfill his desires. Luckily the woman woke up, pushed Issei to the ground and called the police. The police arrived and they charged Issei with attempted assault. Issei did not tell police his true intentions. But his charges were dropped after his father had paid a settlement to the victim. He also stated in an interview that he would often bring women home and try to shoot them, but his fingers froze and he couldn't pull the trigger.
After these incidents, Issei did actually seek help. He went to a psychiatrist and told them about his dark desires. Issei suspected that he was a danger to society because he had already begun to act out his fantasies. The psychiatrist categorized Sagawa as highly dangerous, but Issei’s father constructed a cover-up and sent him to a school overseas. Issei began studying at the University of Paris, Sorbonne. He had not forgotten about how close he had come to fulfilling his fantasy in Tokyo and became convinced that if he had been better prepared, he could have succeeded.
One day, Issei saw another tall, blonde woman, a 25-year-old Dutch student named Renée Hartevelt. He could not get her out of his head and eventually devised a plan to get her closer to him so he could fulfill his desire of eating her. Issei would use his father’s wealth to employ Renée as a private tutor. He paid her a good amount of money and they soon developed a friendship. Issei would take Renée to art exhibits and invite her over for dinner.
On the night of June 11, 1981, when Issei was 32, he invited Renée to his apartment under the pretext of translating poetry for a school assignment. She arrived and began reading poetry at a desk with her back to Sagawa when he shot her in the neck with a .22-caliber rifle. Issei actually fainted after shooting Renée, but soon gained consciousness and actually considered calling an ambulance. But he then thought that this was all he ever dreamed of and he would be crazy to give up this once in a lifetime chance. So there, in his Sorbonne apartment, Issei tasted human flesh for the first time.
Over the next day, he consumed and assaulted Renée’s body. He said, “(It) melted in my mouth like raw tuna in a sushi restaurant.” He also took many pictures of the body (you can find the pictures online, but I wouldn't recommend it unless you have a strong stomach). He eventually realized that it was time to get rid of it, so he started off by cutting the pieces of Renée’s body that he wanted to save and eat later. He planned to get rid of the body in a lake nearby. He put the leftovers of the body into two suitcases and started taking them to the lake. When people began to stare at Issei struggling with the suitcases, he got worried and left the suitcases on the ground and went home. There was a person nearby who saw Issei leave the suitcases and got real suspicious, so they called the police. Police arrived and they opened up the suitcases and what they saw horrified them. With the help of eyewitnesses the police were able to track Issei and, two days later, they went to Issei’s apartment with a search warrant.
Inside they found pieces of Renée in the freezer. When confronted about this, Issei did not even try to deny. He said to the police, “I killed her to eat her flesh.” He was arrested on the spot. Issei stood trial and began to relay such indecent details that the judge decided he wasn’t incompetent to stand trial. Issei was sent to Paul Guiraud Asylum.
Again, with the help of his father, Issei was able to escape his punishments. Sagawa Akira worked out a deal with French authorities to have Issei transferred to a psychiatric hospital in Japan. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the French court hadn’t already deemed him unfit to stand trial. Issei Sagawa’s charges were dropped and he was allowed to return home. Japanese authorities were unable to press any charges without the criminal paperwork from his crime’s country of origin. Issei had stayed in a Japanese psychiatric hospital for only fifteen months when he checked himself out in August of 1985. Just five years after his crime, he was a free man.
Issei Sagawa walks free in the streets to this day. Not only that, but he also makes money off of recounting his crime and talking about his cannibalistic condition (you can even consider him a celebrity). Issei has even been granted a passport to go to Germany. Issei once stated, “What I truly wished was to eat her living flesh”, he said. “Nobody believes me, but my ultimate intention was to eat her, not necessarily to kill her”. Believe it or not, Issei still dreams of consuming humans again. In an interview he said, “Just today, I saw a girl with a really nice derrière (butt) on my way to the train station. When I see things like that, I think about wanting to eat someone again before I die. So yes, I do still harbor these desires, and I specifically want to eat a Japanese woman this time.” Issei Sagawa is now a food critic, magazine columnist, TV commentator, porn artist and even a porn star. He lives right outside of Tokyo.
This case is another one that is a lot like the Michael Alig that I covered. He murdered- and ate- someone and got famous because of it. This one is even worse because Issei didn't even have to spend jailtime for it. I believe that Issei's father just wanted the best for him and so never let him face the consequences for his actions. Issei was also born prematurely and he was so small that he could fit in his father's palm. He had immediately developed enteritis, a disease of the small intestine at birth, so it is possible that his father had a soft spot for him because of that. Anyways, for those living in Tokyo or near, I hope you don't run into Issei. Stay safe out there and remember to always carry around a bottle of pepper spray. As always, stay alive. Bye!