Issei Sagawa, the sinister “Japanese cannibal”, is dead

Issei Sagawa, on February 5, 1992, during a meeting with an AFP journalist in his apartment.

AFP - JUNJI KUROKAWA

Text by: RFI Follow

2 mins

Nicknamed the "Japanese cannibal" for murdering and partly eating a Dutch student in Paris in 1981, Issei Sagawa died of pneumonia aged 73.

Deemed insane, he was dismissed and placed in a psychiatric hospital in France before being released in 1985 and repatriated to Japan.

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With our correspondent in Tokyo,

His crime inspired horror and fascination around the world.

Issei Sagawa was studying comparative literature at the Sorbonne University in Paris, when in June 1981, he invited his Dutch classmate Renée Hartevelt to his studio and shot her dead with a rifle.

Then, after having raped him, cut with an electric saw before consuming parts of his body for three days.

Photos of the butchering had appeared in the magazine

.

“

, ”he confessed after his arrest.

Experts attesting to his mental illness, he had benefited from a dismissal and had been interned in France then in Japan before recovering freedom in August 1985, without any real psychiatric follow-up.

Shame and Fascination

In Japan, the crime had caused embarrassment and emotion.

The shame had rebounded on all the country, making him lose the face.

The Japanese often have the feeling, especially abroad, of representing Japan collectively.

They find it difficult to adopt a more individualistic approach, to convince themselves that the gesture of Issei Sagawa was that of a mental patient.

As it is in any society.

For the writer Juro Kara who devoted a novel, 

to this crowned crime of Japanese Goncourt, Issei Sagawa had a complex vis-a-vis the West.

His letters revealed morbid, necrophilic and cannibalistic obsessions for a long time.

Upon his return to Japan, Issei Sagawa had become a media star.

He appeared on television, had published several best-sellers like

or 

, and had drawn a manga recounting his crime.

Two anthropologists also made a documentary about him in 2018.

“

, ”said the person concerned in the film, indicating that he could not explain his act.

He described his "

" as "

", stating, "

".

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