Ray William Johnson: True Story Podcast
The Famous Japanese Cannibal - The Issei Sagawa story
02 Feb 2025
This is the story of Issei Sagawa, the famous Japanese cannibal
Full Episode
So this kid, he really wants to eat people, literally. Now his name is Isai and he's from Japan and he comes from a really wealthy family. And one day he's in class in the first grade and he starts noticing his classmates legs. And Isai is like, damn, that leg looks kind of tasty. And in fact, it looks so tasty to him that he kinda has the urge to bite into it.
And his classmate is a boy and he doesn't even like boys. And that's when Isai realizes that he kind of wants to eat people. And from that point on, he regularly fantasizes about gnawing on people constantly. And as the years pass, this fantasy of his just gets stronger and stronger. And specifically, he has a thing for Western women who are tall because, you know, he's a short king.
So he wants to eat a tall white woman. And eventually Isai grows up and he's 24 years old. And by this point, he's going out of his mind with these cannibalism fantasies. And that's when he finally gets an opportunity. Because one day, around this time, he notices a young German woman. And she's tall and white. So Isai, he low-key starts to follow her around, even following her to her home.
And in doing that, he notices that when the weather is warm, she leaves her bedroom window open at night. So then one night, he decides he's gonna go for it. He's gonna sneak into her apartment, cut off a piece of her, and he's gonna eat it. So he goes to her apartment and he climbs in and he creeps through her window while she's there in her bed sleeping.
So now he's in her apartment and unfortunately for him, she hears him and suddenly, bam, she wakes up and she starts screaming and she freaks out and she pushes him down to the ground because, you know, he's not very big, so she overpowers him. And Isai panics and he's like, oh shit, and he runs away. But unfortunately for him, she calls police and police catch up to him and bam, they arrest him.
And they have no idea that he was trying to eat this woman, so they just end up charging him with SA. But remember how I said that he comes from a wealthy family? Well lucky for him, his dad steps in and pays a large settlement to that German woman in exchange for her dropping the SA charges against Isai. So after all that, Isai walks away from this with a clean record.
Four years later, he moves from Tokyo all the way over to Paris. I mean, he's 28 years old at this point and he wants to study language and get his PhD from the university there. However, his desire to eat people still hasn't gone away. So while he's there in Paris trying to get his PhD, nearly every night he hires a prostitute and he brings them home.
And there he waits for a moment when they turn their back to him. And when they do, he low-key gets his rifle, because I guess he has a rifle. And he points it at them because he's going to unalive them. But lucky for the prostitutes, Isai can't ever bring himself to pull the trigger. He just doesn't have the nerve. He's scared about what will happen to him if he finally does it.
And so he goes through this routine night after night. He brings a hooker back to his place, points his rifle at them when they aren't looking, and every time he fails to follow through. And this goes on for a few years. But then one day, everything changes for Isai. Because he meets this woman, Renee. And Renee is a sweet, friendly student. And she's in one of his literature classes.
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