Sada Abe
Abe was arrested and interrogated over eight sessions. When asked why she had severed Ishida's genitalia, Abe replied, "Because I couldn't take his head or body with me. I wanted to take the part of him that brought back to me the most vivid memories." The interrogating officer was struck by Abe's demeanor when asked why she had killed Ishida. "Immediately she became excited and her eyes sparkled in a strange way." Her answer was: "I loved him so much, I wanted him all to myself. But since we were not husband and wife, as long as he lived he could be embraced by other women. I knew that if I killed him no other woman could ever touch him again, so I killed him ..." In attempting to explain what distinguished Abe's case from over a dozen other similar cases in Japan, William Johnston suggests that it is this answer which captured the imagination of the nation: "She had killed not out of jealousy but out of love." Mark Schreiber notes that the Sada Abe Incident occurred at a time when the Japanese media were preoccupied with extreme political and military troubles, including the Incident and a looming war in China. He suggests that a sensationalistic sex scandal such as this served as a welcome national release from the disturbing events of the time. The case also struck a chord with the ("erotic-grotesque-nonsense") style popular at the time, and the Sada Abe Incident came to represent that genre for years to come.