Strangler, Star: Summary

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Recommended: Sex for money in Japan

Geisha, Harlot, Strangler, Star: A Woman, Sex, and Morality in Modern Japan by William Johnston is a very informative read that covers the life of Abe Sada in extreme detail from when she was a young girl to the aftermath of the murder and castration of her lover that she committed. Johnston’s stated reason for talking about this particular case is that it, in particular, had detailed records for him to use to discuss the social and political treatment of women in Japan at the time (3). This was emphasized largely in the introduction, but for the most part the book was a biographical account of Abe’s life with cultural background provided by the author and occasional lines drawn between events and the larger social picture. Rather than using …show more content…

To start out his analysis of Abe, Johnston explains how she got her start in the sex industry as the ultimate result of the misogynistic Victorian value placed on virginity (30). When Abe was fifteen, she was raped by an acquaintance of hers, an event that devalued her in the eyes of a society that victim-blamed and did not care that she was raped, but only that she had had sex (Johnston 44-46). She didn’t want to be marginalized to the immoral side of society, but the rape forced her into that category, furthering her trauma and leading to her acting out and participating in risk-seeking behavior (Johnston 48). This eventually led to her being forced into apprenticing as a geisha as a punishment for her promiscuity (Johnston 57). Rather than going back to her family and apologizing for her behavior, she was resigned to being there because she “had a blemished body anyhow” (Johnston 58). In this account, the emphasis is placed on how Abe was affected by the harmful attitudes of the time, rather than using her to expand on what those attitudes meant for other women. She was marginalized, she began to act out, and she internalized the stigma from her rape because of society, but for something that must have been a common trend, the effects of this

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