writing under the empire of Abe Sada

For a long time, Arnaud Guigue admired The Empire of the Sensesby Nagisa Oshima (1976), which he considers to be the“one of the most beautiful films about physical passion”without further questioning the true story that inspired the Japanese director in this “bullfight of love” (the original title), pitting Abe Sada, a former prostitute and geisha, against Kichizo, the owner of the inn where she works. A voiceover certainly concluded that after having killed and then emasculated her lover, the young woman had wandered around Tokyo for three days before being arrested in possession of the deceased’s penis. But Arnaud Guigue had not thought about the legal consequences of the case.

A day, “about three years ago”shortly after reading the essay Ceremonies. At the heart of The Empire of the Sensesby Stéphane du Mesnildot (The Black Lizard, 2021), has “reactivated” his chronic interest in the film, he wonders what Abe Sada’s life was like after his arrest in 1936. He discovers that, sentenced to six years in prison, she was released after five years, in 1941. She wrote, in 1947, his Memoirs, which a Japanese publisher subsequently published with the minutes (PV) of the investigation and the press articles published at the time on this resounding affair. “I tell myself that this book must be translated, and that I would like to sign the preface”he explains to “World of Books”. The two publishing houses with a strong Asian tropism, Arléa and Philippe Picquier, to whom he proposed the idea declined it, due to the cost of such a translation. But an editor suggested that she write about the destiny of Abe Sada. Thus she lays the beginnings of what will become I am the one you are looking forthe first novel by Arnaud Guigue, author of several film-loving essays, in particular on François Truffaut.

So he buys the book. Not reading Japanese, he found, thanks to the National Institute of Oriental Languages ​​and Civilizations, a private teacher of this language, Aïme Konuma, willing to transform class hours into simultaneous translation sessions. During these, he takes note in a notebook of what seems essential to him in the account given by Abe Sada, during the interrogations, of the weeks of passion with Kichizo which preceded his death. He can then see to what extent, in her Memoirs, she has watered down the days preceding the strangulation and emasculation of her lover, while she recounted them to the police “in an almost unbelievable luxury of detail”. This decryption of the PVs convinces the author that Oshima read them: “From a factual point of view, the film is extremely faithful to what she told the police. This is disturbing, because when you see the film you might think that it is based on the director’s fantasies. But the strength of it is to transform what is in the PV into something dazzling, and to make the lovers’ relationship a sort of sacred rite. »

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