ABSTRACT
In the opening act of Madame Butterfly, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, a lieutenant on a U.S. Navy warship, has arrived at his new house in Nagasaki, Japan to marry his new bride, 15 year old Cio-cio san, or “Butterfly” (Ilica & Giacosa, 1906). Laughing, Pinkerton informs the American consul, Sharpless, who is there for the wedding, that he has purchased the house for 999 years, but the contract can be cancelled each month. He adds that he intends to apply the marriage contract in the same way, “ . . . I’m marrying in Japanese fashion, tied up for nine hundred and ninety-nine years, free, though, to annul the marriage monthly” (Ilica & Giacosa, 1906, p. 10). The young bride arrives with friends and family for the marriage ceremony, ecstatic at the prospect of true love and leaving her life of poverty behind. In her quest to please her husband and become “American,” she has renounced Buddhism to adopt Christianity. Her family disowns her; she views the loss of her family as a necessary sacrifice for her new life.
