Poetic justice: is the Japanese cannibal finally paying a price?
Issei Sagawa, who escaped prosecution for murdering and eating a fellow student, has lived off his notoriety for three decades. But as his star fades, is the Japanese cannibal finally paying the price, wonders Julian Ryall
Close to tears, Issei Sagawa bemoans the fact that notoriety doesn't pay nearly as well as it used to. He sips a strawberry milkshake on the terrace of a cafe in a suburb west of Tokyo and tells me that he can see no reason to continue living, that he has no friends or money any more, that he is ill and being harassed by the police. He says he constantly thinks about killing himself, "but I'm too scared to actually do it".
"I just wish it was all over," he says, looking down mournfully.
Physically deformed - Sagawa, 64, is under five feet tall, has a head that is too large for his body and stumpy fingers on child-like hands - he also suffers from diabetes and it would be easy for anyone unaware of his dark past to feel some sympathy for this curious-looking but extremely intelligent fellow.
On stepping into his cramped and chaotic apartment, one begins to get a better feel for the man. And for the monster that lurks within that seemingly innocuous little body - the monster that convinced Sagawa, as a student at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1981, to shoot 25-year-old Dutch student Renee Hartvelt in the head, to sexually abuse her corpse and then to carve her up and eat parts of her body.
I first met Sagawa a decade ago. Back then, he hinted that he was a bit short of cash and I paid for the coffees, but the last 10 years have clearly not been kind to him. Where he was once dapper, he is now down at heel. The suit is shiny at the elbows and the shoes are scuffed. His mobile phone has only just been reactivated after he scraped together enough cash to pay an outstanding bill.
However, although circumstances have forced him to exchange a roomy, bright apartment in Chiba for a dingy property in industrial Kawasaki, some things have not changed. There is no name on the plate by the front door - Sagawa says his neighbours do not know who he is and he wants to keep it that way - and stepping into his kitchen-cum-dining room is an assault on the senses.