Japan's Hannibal Lecter

He killed and ate Dutch woman classmate but lived as a free man due to legal loopholes

- Walter Sim

Any list of Japan's most depraved criminals should include Issei Sagawa, who has been dubbed the "Kobe Cannibal" and Japan's Hannibal Lecter after he rejoiced in killing and eating a woman in Paris.

A fictional character created by novelist Thomas Harris, Lecter is a serial killer who eats his victims and remains a respected forensic psychiatrist until his capture.

But to describe Sagawa, who died of complications from pneumonia at the age of 73 on Nov 24, as a "criminal" might be inaccurate: He never faced the long arm of the law due to legal loopholes.

Yet he made no secret of his sordid acts, gaining cult celebrity status in Japan and around the world along the way as he profiteered from his notoriety through memoirs, media interviews and even a pornographic film.

His story inspired the song Too Much Blood by The Rolling Stones, and he was the subject of Japanese novelist Juro Kara's Letters From Sagawa, which was awarded Japan's most prestigious literary award, the Akutagawa Prize, in 1982.

In June 1981, Sagawa, then 32, killed his Dutch classmate Renee Hartevelt in Paris where he had been studying for a doctorate in literature.

He invited the 25-year-old to his home, where he shot her with a small-calibre rifle at close range and raped her corpse, before dismembering and devouring her body over three days.

"Tall, healthy-looking Western women became the trigger for my cannibalistic fantasies," he told Vice Media in a 2009 interview.