Episode #12: Abe Sada, Part 1 (Show Notes)

She perpetrated the crime of the century; cutting her name into her murdered lover’s thigh, Abe Sada left her brand on Japanese history, too. Born during a period when girls and women were compelled to obey patriarchal social customs, she revolted against the archetype.

Born in Tokyo’s Kanda neighborhood to a bourgeois family of tatami mat makers, Abe flouted conventions early. Throughout her youth and teenage years, she was infatuated by the glamorous, yet mysterious world of geishas. It was a scandalous preoccupation for a genteel, upper-middle class girl. Unsurprisingly, after her matrimonial prospects were seemingly doomed she utterly embraced the part of misfit.

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