It is early evening on Saturday 13 June 1981. The sun is about to set, and there are many people still enjoying the summer heat in the Bois de Boulogne park in Paris. Clearly visible in the orange and red rays of the sun comes a tiny Japanese man carrying some suspiciously heavy suitcases. Many people notice the 32-year-old literature student from Kobe in Japan, Issei Sagawa. He is only 144 centimeters tall, and describes himself as a bastard. Issei stops at a lake. He stands fascinated and stares across the other side of the water. – Everything was red and beautiful. I saw an old man and a child. For the first time everything was in color, Issei recalls in an interview with Vice in 2011. Suddenly he hears a scream behind him. He turns and sees a man opening one of the suitcases. – Is it yours? asks the man. – No, answers Issei instinctively. The suitcase is opened. A bloody sheet reveals enough for the man to shout: “Murderer!” Issei calmly leaves the scene. Three days later he is arrested. In the refrigerator in his apartment, the police find several body parts. Issei Sagawa quickly becomes known as “the cannibal from Kobe”. He willingly confesses his actions. – I killed her to eat her flesh, Issei is said to have said when the police searched his small apartment. Issei Sagawa is escorted away from the police station in Paris after being questioned on June 17, 1981. Photo: DOMINIQUE FAGET / AFP Renée The woman Issei killed was Renée Hartevelt, a 24-year-old fellow student from the Netherlands. They both studied comparative literature at the prestigious Sorbonne University. Issei invited Renée to his home for dinner. – At that time, my desire to eat a woman had changed from a desire to an obligation, says Issei in the Vice interview. Several times he had taken women home with the intention of killing and eating them. All attempts failed. According to Issei, he froze whenever it came down to it. That was not the case with Renée. She sat reading from a book of German poetry they both had an assignment on. Behind her back, Issei picked up a rifle, took aim and shot Renée in the neck. – I was really scared. Still, I pulled the trigger. She fell over against the desk. Then she fell to the ground along with the chair she was sitting on, Issei tells Vice. He raped her. Then he began to eat. With the help of an electric knife and a sharp butcher knife, he cut up Renée’s body. Along the way, he photographs the process, before he had to get rid of the body due to the incipient decay. Guilty but free Despite having himself confessed and documented his criminal acts, Issei soon ends up a free man. Preparatory judge in the trial in France, Jean Louis Bruguière, already after a few days appointed three psychiatrists to make an assessment of Issei Sagawa’s sanity. For a year, they make evaluations of the cannibal. According to an article from Le Monde, the psychiatrists conclude that Issei’s only motive for the murder was “a cannibalistic impulse”. “The actions were driven by an alienating impulse which constituted a state of mental disorder,” the assessment states. Under Article 64 of the French Penal Code, Issei Sagawa is classified as insane. The trial against him will be closed on 30 March 1983, as no charges can be brought. Issei is sent to a psychiatric hospital on the outskirts of Paris, where he spends a little over a year. Issei’s family is working during this time to get him home. At the same time, it is not popular among the French that the cannibal is treated at their expense. On 21 May 1984, Issei Sagawa is sent home to Japan. “The chances of rehabilitation are better in well-known surroundings,” the statement says. In Japan, on the other hand, the psychiatrists conclude that Sagawa is sane, and that he cannot therefore be kept in a psychiatric hospital. The police in Japan are trying to bring an indictment, but cannot be handed over the legal documents from the French police, who consider the case closed. On August 12, 1986, five years and two months after killing and eating Renée Hartevelt, Issei Sagawa is once again a free man. And so it was, until his last days. Issei Sagawa poses in front of erotic paintings he made in February 2005. Photo: Richard Jones/REX / Shutterstock editorial The celebrity cannibal When Issei is released from the hospital, he has neither job opportunities nor any income. But in the 1980s, Japan undergoes its greatest yappé period. It doesn’t take long before a media house contacts Issei and asks him to comment on the case against a serial killer. – They could slap piles of many thousands on the table for me to write an article, says Issei in the interview with Vice. It quickly developed into him becoming a celebrity. Issei was invited on TV, he published books, and made a cartoon about the murder of Renée Hartevelt. He appeared in several surreal art films, including a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, where Issei is dressed as the big bad wolf. Issei also stars in a porn film, where he spends 24 hours with a young woman. It is only after the two have sex that Issei reveals the truth about his past. At the same time, he uses his parents’ savings to travel the world with Western women. Issei Sagawa prays in front of portraits of his recently deceased parents in his apartment in Tokyo in February 2005. Photo: Richard Jones/REX / Shutterstock editorial Towards the end of his life, media inquiries have dried up. The money has run out. In addition, Issei states to be impotent. – I don’t even know who I am. I don’t know what the meaning of my life is. It will never get better for me. It would be much easier to die, he said. On November 24, 2022, Issei Sagawa dies of pneumonia, aged 73. This is according to his brother and a friend, according to the AFP news agency. He spent the last years of his life in solitude and poverty.
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The celebrity cannibal from Kobe, Issei Sagawa, is dead – news Urix – Foreign news and documentaries
