THE CONFESSION – “You are delicious..”

{Excerpt from In the Fog, Sagawa’s post-cannibal best-selling account of his murder of fellow Dutch student Renée Hartevelt in Paris}

11th JUNE, 1981 – ” I am amazed. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. Tall, blonde, with pure white skin, she astonishes me with her grace. I invited her to my home for a Japanese dinner. She accepts. After the meal I asked her to read my favorite German Expressionist poem. As she reads i can’t keep my eyes off her. After she leaves I can still smell her body on the bed sheet where she sat reading the poem. I lick the chopsticks and dishes she used. I can taste her lips. My passion is so great. I want to eat her. If I do she will be mine forever. There is no escape from this desire.

I arrange for her to read the poem for me once more. I lie to her. I tell her I want to record the poem on tape for my Japanese teacher. She believes. I prepare everything. The cassette recorder for the poem, the rifle for the sacrifice. She arrives on time. After drinking tea and whisky, she speaks. She smiles at me. But I know inside that I’m the strangest one of all. Her yellow sleeveless top shows off her beautiful white arms. I can smell her body.

I turn on the recorder. She starts to read . She speaks in perfect German. I reach for the rifle hidden beside the chest of drawers. I stand slowly and aim the riffle at the back of her head. I cannot stop myself.

There is a loud sound and her body falls from the chair onto the floor. It is like she is watching me. I see her cheeks, her eyes, her nose and mouth, the blood pouring from her head. I try to talk to her, but she no longer answers. There is blood all over the floor. I try to wipe it up, but I realize I cannot stop the flow of blood from her head. It is very quiet here. There is only the silence of death.

I start to take off her clothes. It is hard to take the clothes off a dead body. Finally it is done. Her beautiful white body is before me. I’ve waited so long this day and now it is here. I touch her ass. It is so very smooth. I wonder where I should bite first. I decide to bite the top of her butt. My nose is covered with her cold white skin. I try to beat down hard, but I can’t. I suddenly have a horrible headache. I get a knife from the kitchen and stab it deeply into her skin.

Suddenly a lot of sallow fat oozes from the wound. It reminds me of Indian corn. It continues to ooze. It is strange. Finally I find the red meat under the sallow fat. I scoop it out and put it in my mouth. I chew. It has no smell and no taste. It melts in my mouth like a perfect piece of tuna. I look in her eyes and say: “You are delicious.”

I cut her body and lift the meat to my mouth again and again. Then I take a photograph of her white corpse with its deep wounds. I have sex with her body. When I hug her she lets out a breath. I’m frightened, she seems alive. I kiss her and tell her I love her. Then I drag her body to the bathroom. By now I am exhausted, but I cut into her hip and put the meat in a roasing pan. After it is cooked I sit at the table using her underwear as a napkin. They still smell of her body.

Then I turn on the tape of her reading the German poem and eat. There is not enough taste. I use some salt and some mustard and it is delicious, very high quality meat. Then I go back to the bathroom and cut off her breast and bake it. It swells while it cooks. I serve the breast on the table and eat it with a fork and knife. It isn’t very good. Too greasy. I try to cut into another part of her body. Her thighs were wonderful. Finally she is in my stomach. Finally she is in my stomach. Finally she is mine. It is the best dinner I’ve ever had.

Afterwards I sleep with her.

Next morning she is still here. She doesn’t smell bad. Today I must finish cutting up her body.I have to put it into suitcases and sink it in the lake. It will be her grave.

I touch the cold body again and I wonder where I should start. I start to cut off all the meat before amputating the limbs. While I cut her calf I suddenly want to taste it. I see the beautiful red meat beneath the fat. I grasp her knee and her ankle, and tear it with my teeth. It is tender. I slowly chew and savor it.

After eating most of the calf I look at myself in the mirror. There is grease all over my face. And then I start to eat at random. I bite her little toe. It still smell of her feet. I stab the knife into her arch and see the red meat deep inside. I thrust my fingers inside and dig out the meat and put it in my mouth. It tastes okay. Then I stab the knife into her armpit. Ever since I saw it under her yellow sleeveless top I wondered how it would taste this good. The wonderful taste cheers me up and I devour her underarm up to the elbow.

Finally I cut off her private parts. When I touch the pubic hair it has a very bad smell. I bite her clit, but it won’t come off, it just stretches. So I throw it in the frying pan and pop it in my mouth. I chew very carefully and swallow it. It is so sweet.

After I swallow it, I feel her in my body and get hot. I turn the body over and open her buttocks, revealing her anus. I scoop it out with my knife and try to put it in my mouth. It smells too much. I put it in the frying pan and throw it in my mouth. It still smells. I spit it out. I go into the next room. It smell of fat, like I’ve been frying a chicken.

It’s been twenty-four hours now. Some huge flies hover and buzz in the bathroom. I try to chase them away, but they came back. They swarm on her face. They seem to tell me that I’ve lost her forever. It is no longer her. Where is she? She’s gone far away. I’ve broken her. Like a child who breaks his toy. I try to use an electric knife to cut her body. It doesn’t work. It just makes a loud sound. I use a hatchet. I strike several times. It’s hard work. I strike her thigh. Her body jumps up. If she could feel, it would have hurt.

Finally the thigh separates from her body. I bite it again, like I would bite a chicken leg. Then I cut off her arms. It is even harder than the thigh. I use the electric knife again. It makes a shrill sound, like the sound of her shrill voice. It works this time. Her hand still wears a ring and a bracelet. When I see her long fingers I am driven by another impulse. I use her hand to masturbate. Her long fingers excite me.

When I’m finished I try to bite her finger. I can’t. I’m disappointed. I put her hands into the plastic bag along with her legs. And then I see her face. It is still quiet. She has a small nose and a sweet lower lip. When she was alive I wanted to bite them. Now I can satisfy that desire. It’s so easy to bite off her nose. As I chew the cartilage I can hear the noise. I use a knife to cut off more of the cartilage and put it in my mouth. It really doesn’t taste very good. I scoop out her lower lip with my knife and put it in my mouth. It has hard skin. I decide to eat it later when I can fry it. So I put it in the refrigerator.

I want her tongue. I can’t open her lower jaw, but I can reach in between her teeth. Finally it comes out. I cut it off and put it in my mouth. It’s hard to chew. I see my face in the mirror. Her tongue entwined with my tongue. I try to close my mouth, but her tongue slips out. Finally I cut the skin off the tongue and taste the meat.

I try to eat her eyes. It’s hard for me to stab into them, though it is the easiest part of her face. I can tears coming from them. It frightens me. Her eyes are all that is left of her face. It is nearly a skull.

I decide to take out her stomach. When I stab under her navel a little fat appears and then I can see the red meat under the fat. I slice a piece of the red meat and put it on a plate. Then I stab into the stomach. The internal organs appear. There is a great length of rolled tubes and I find a gray bag at the end of the tubes. It must be the bladder. There is a strong smell as soon as I pick it up. I thrust my hand into her body cavity. There is another bag. It must be her womb. If she had lived she would have had a baby in this womb. The thought depresses me for a moment.

I pull out the intestines. My hands sting from the digestive juices. At last I have to cut off her head. It is the most difficult thing I have to do. I cut off the meat on her neck until I can see bone, then I cut again. She still wears her necklace. I try to use the electric knife, but it doesn’t work very well. It just makes its shrill sound.

So I use the hatchet. I imagine myself on the guillotine. It is surprisingly easy to cut through. With the head gone her body is now only flesh. When I grab the hair and hang up the head, I realize I am a cannibal. I put the head in a plastic bag. I separate the body and put it into two plastic bags. They are heavy. It is hard to put them into the suitcases. I am finished. It is midnight. I call a taxi.

I am back home. I turn the TV and open the refrigerator. I put the dishes on the glass table. I recognize each pieces of meat. This is part of her hip and this is part of her thigh. I fry them on the stove. I set the table. There is mustard, salt, pepper and sauce. I put her underwear beside the dish. I sniff it and look at a nude woman in a magazine. I try to remember which part of her is in my mouth, but it is difficult to connect the meat with a body. It just seems like a piece of meat. I continue to eat her body until I am caught. Each day the meat becomes more tender, each day the taste is more sweet and delicious. ”

THE BECOMING – Hansel & Gretel, Grace Kelly and Shakespeare

{Excerpt taken off Issei Sagawa: Celebrity Cannibal by Steven Morris}

Tomi Sagawa fell down some steps, narrowly avoiding a miscarriage. The infant within her, nearly lost, was born prematurely but alive on Monday, 26 April 1949. His parents named him Issei and would later remark on how the baby was minute enough to fit in the palm of his father’s hand.

As a toddler it would begin for him, this imprinting of cannibalism. There was an uncle, Mitsuo, who at the traditional New Year’s festivities often disguised himself as a frightening, boy-eating giant. Dressed to look like a monster, he would chase the scurrying children, pretending he wanted to devour them. Little Issei and his elder brother were the recipients of the “horrible” giant’s attentions and it was up to their father, Akira Sagawa, the knight quite literally in shining armour, to appear as their saviour. The boys whooped and yelled hysterically as the giant, making his hungry giant noises, dashed around the house in pursuit. Strangely, each time the game was played the giant would always emerge the victor, first blinding, and then slaying the gallant knight, Akira. The children would then be snatched up and taken away, ready for the giant’s equally sizable cast iron cooking pot.

Issei Sagawa later recalled the giddy mixture of terror and elation he felt as he and his brother were lowered, struggling wildly, into the “stew pot.” The game was profoundly enjoyed by both boys and had a deep and lasting effect on Issei. As he became old enough to read, his early entry into a make-believe world where humans ate other humans resounded in his mind and he found himself reaching for as many fairy tale books as he could find, keeping a keen eye out for any stories involving people being eaten by monsters and dragons, or other people.

The tale of Hansel and Gretel was one of his favourites and he would lay awake in bed for hours, fervently replaying in his mind the story of the witch and her “fattening up” of the children she captured. He experienced an early sexual awakening at the premise of other children being prepared to be eaten and fancied himself the victim. As with the game he played with his uncle, Issei enjoyed the masochistic element inherent in being manhandled, forced into the pot by a powerful giant. It gave him a torrid sensation in his body that he wilfully mustered again and again as he lay in his bed at night.

There was definitely something different about Issei Sagawa the schoolboy. Typically he was a loner, unable or unwilling to express his true feelings. Sharing his secret dreams of cannibalism was not something he was likely to consider due to fear of ridicule. The other children would have laughed and mocked him, or worse, rejected him. Though he was often to be found alone, virtually friendless, Sagawa enjoyed school. The process of learning was something the intelligent boy embraced, a compensatory mechanism for being unable to perform socially. Like other emerging killers who as children were shy and emotionally stunted, he sought refuge in the classroom.

In 1961, twelve-year-old Issei Sagawa began his secondary education. In accordance with his intellect, he veered away from fantastical fairytales like those written by the Brothers Grimm, and instead began to take notice of the great literary works. Stories unfolding in the faraway Western World, such as War and Peace, particularly drew him, but not in terms of love for the story itself. Sagawa was developing a preoccupation with revisiting particular characters, continually digesting descriptions of the grace and refined femininity of the heroines.

Sagawa later spoke of how he regarded these women, with their pale flesh and romantic dispositions, as “angels.” Around this time he was also becoming immersed in viewing the works of Auguste Renoir, the French impressionist. Renoir’s paintings typified the creamy, flesh tones Sagawa longed for in a woman and he would gaze upon these images often, wondering how all that luxuriant peach-hued skin would feel under his touch, and how it would taste.

Sagawa’s first ejaculation occurred whilst he thought of one of his favourite western embodiments; the actress, Grace Kelly. He was fixated on the low cut dresses she and other silver screen starlets favoured. His very specific fantasy included first caressing, then dining on such women. The fusion between sex and cannibalism had been established, and for Sagawa it was the point of no return.

Ever conscious of his introverted physicality, he felt he could nourish himself with flesh from the bodies of the amply proportioned Renoir beauties and Hollywood actresses who held him transfixed. As he grew, his fantasies intensified and he took pleasure in relieving himself through masturbation at any opportunity. Now a further element was introduced to his imaginings, overt violence.

One morbid fantasy involved Sagawa voyeuristically spying on a well-built western goddess as she showered. He would then creep up on her and viciously strangle her from behind with his belt. The idea of throttling a naked woman to death was now a vital component to the illusion and realising that he had difficulty becoming aroused by anything that did not involve killing and eating somebody, he finally sought professional intervention.

Sagawa first contacted a psychiatrist at the age of fifteen, some years after his sexual fantasises had taken root, but not long after they had begun to vividly incorporate murder. The psychiatrist he spoke with informed him that in order to be of any assistance, Sagawa would need to actually come to his office and talk, rather than hide away on the other end of a telephone. Far too embarrassed to sit face to face with someone and discuss his private yearnings, Sagawa reluctantly closed off this possible avenue of release, but did eventually share his secrets with his brother. The older boy was not impressed, passing it off as Issei trying to pull his leg, and dismissed the disturbing revelations out of hand.

Sagawa’s lack of connection, professional or familial, forced the teenager to retreat even further into his isolated and increasingly violent inner realm. He could not get these thoughts out of his head, and if no one could help him, he certainly could not help himself. Sagawa resigned himself to the convenient and weak alternative of “what will be will be,” and gave up the struggle. One day he knew, he would capture one of the white goddesses who haunted his mind, and subject her to his darkest needs.

The energies Issei Sagawa would pour into his considerable academic accomplishments in no way dampened his lust for flesh, and in 1970 he finally allowed his first foray into a real-life encounter endanger the life of a human being. He stalked a young German woman, found out where she lived and that she sometimes kept a window in her house open on warm evenings. He decided to enter her home, kill her, and enact his cannibalistic dream. Asleep before he entered, the girl was soon wide awake as the decidedly unsubtle assailant clambered into her room. Her screams sent him running.

The next day, Sagawa was back on the phone to another psychiatrist. He needed help, he said, badly. This time he was persuaded to visit his office. Having listened to Sagawa’s story of the night before, the psychiatrist was unsympathetic, pronouncing the young man a public danger and making it clear that he had crossed ethical boundaries with his admission. For some reason, nothing came of the incident and the issue of Sagawa’s intended assault was quietly dropped. As initially recalcitrant about the botched attack as he was, it did not take long for Sagawa’s desires to build to sufficient levels where he actively wanted to do it again.

Whilst keeping his perversions to himself, biding his time until he could try to realise them a second time, he continued to achieve educationally, earning himself an MA degree in Shakespearean literature. Soon he would make a journey he must have known would bring about a head-on collision of his fantasies and the real world.

In 1977, Issei Sagawa switched the venue from Tokyo’s Wako University to the Sorbonne in Paris, which was of course bristling with potential candidates for his affections. He was twenty-eight-years old, intelligent, cultured, and a virgin. His pervasive urge to kill and cannibalize had mutated to such a degree that another attack on his part was imminent.

Suddenly in the presence of all these girls, clad in their short skirts and revealing tops, Sagawa was a man on fire. He had been living in the city for almost two years when a tragedy occurred. In 1979, the beautiful American actress, Jean Seberg committed suicide in her car. Issei Sagawa was amazed that her body was found not only in Paris, but also a short distance from where he resided. Seberg had been one of his earliest infatuations and Sagawa concluded it was fate that she had died so near to him. The papers reported how she had been naked when found, and Sagawa could not control his roller-coasting brain. He dreamed of getting to the actress’ corpse before the police found her and taking her back to his flat, to eat.

Surrounded by all these enticing ladies in their form-fitting attire, Sagawa knew he must act soon. Maybe if he took just one woman, it would be enough to get it out of his system. The prospect comforted him somewhat, as he claims he did not wish to go through life killing people. Thinking that by actually carrying out, from beginning to end, his ultimate fantasy, he might be able to stop short of repeating the crime in future.

His plan involved luring the easiest target he could think of – a prostitute – back to his studio-flat and stabbing her to death. He eventually managed to pick up a pretty blonde but after creeping up on her as she showered, found he could not go through with it. There were several other failed attempts to kill leading up to 1980, when Sagawa decided to go back to Japan for a while. He stayed for four months and then returned to Paris; where he would go on to make poor Renée Hartevelt the object of three decades worth of sickness.

THE CELEBRITY – Sagawa walks free

Sagawa openly confessed to what he had done, but a judge ruled that he was not mentally fit to stand trial. Sagawa was sent to the Paul Guirald Asylum for an undetermined period of time.

Akira Sagawa, his father, helped workout a deal, and he was transferred to a hospital in Japan not long after. He was soon judged fit enough to be sent to prison, where he stayed for only 15 months before being paroled. He was free to go wherever he pleased, and was even granted a passport to go to Germany.

Sagawa now lives in Tokyo and is a minor celebrity in Japan. He is often invited as a guest speaker and commentator. He also writes restaurant reviews and in 1992 he appeared in Hisayasu Sato’s film Sisenjiyou no Aria (The Bedroom) as a sadosexual voyeur. He admits to still having fantasies about cannibalism, but says he never wants to realize them again.

Besides books about the murder he committed, Sagawa wrote a commentary book Shonen A in 1997 on the Kobe Children’s Serial Murder of 1997, when a 14-year-old called “Boy A” (“Shonen A”) killed and decapitated a child.

His story inspired the 1981 Stranglers song “La Folie” and the 1983 Rolling Stones song “Too Much Blood”.

He tells people that he is completely safe, and has no desire at all to repeat what he did. As he simply puts it, he had a fantasy, acted on it, and that’s that. Apart from giving interviews to the Media, he likes to paint, and do sculptures. He has even managed to persuade women to pose nude for these.

He now says he has fantasies of being eaten by a western woman, and believes it is the only thing that can save him.

VIDEOS

Night Stalkers – interview, plus a peek at his home:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAzLVOMuJMI

Issei Sagawa – Excuse Me For Living [1993] – PART 1/6:

佐川一政（Issei Sagawa)　語る① – パリ人肉事件の佐川一政　が語る: