In Japan, Issei Sagawa is considered to be the country’s leading authority on cannibalism. Invited on TV shows, interviewed by every journalist, Sagawa’s opinion is revered by everyone for his expertise. Why? Because in 1981, while studying in France, he committed the ugliest crime imaginable: he ate his friend, Renée, a brilliant Dutch student he had met at the university.

Thirty-two years old at the time of this abominable murder, Sagawa invited his friend over to his apartment, shot her in the head, cut her into pieces and refrigerated her in order to eat her little by little. It didn’t take the police very long to find out he was the killer. He had left many clues behind and taken no precaution.

Deemed mentally ill, he was sentenced to time in a psychiatric hospital. Three years later, through a flaw in the legal system, he was transferred to a hospital in Japan. Today, he is free and unbelievably has become famous as a food critic, a porno star and a writer thanks to his hideous crime.

Journalist, Patrick Duval was haunted by this man’s story. In Le Japonais cannibale, a name given to Sagawa by the French press, Duval investigates the crime and uncovers previous attempts at cannibalism in Sagawa’s past.

Pretending to be a student writing a thesis on cannibalism, Duval met Sagawa in his home in Japan and discovered the details of his abominable crime. In addition to studying the motives of the cannibal, Duval gives us an anthropological and psychiatric look at the man who used his story to become famous.