Cultural musing about Madama Butterfly

If we don't understand something of Japanese culture as it existed in the era of Madama Butterfly, then we are tempted to see the story as the West (Pinkerton) being the baddie and the East (Butterfly) being the victim.

The big baddie in the story is the samurai caste system.

Cio-Cio San (Madama Butterfly) has a couple of different cultural elements at play in her past. In the first act of Puccini’s opera we are told that Cio-Cio San’s father committed seppuku at the order of the Shogun.

First of all, to have any interactions with the Shogun suggests that the family was of elevated status in the samurai class. Second, her father was given the honor of seppuku.

If a samurai is dishonored they wait for the pleasure of their superior. The Shogun doesn’t pass a verdict of seppuku but merely allows it as an honor. The samurai is prepared for seppuku and has been composing a death poem for several years.

Here is an example of a death poem by Minamoto Yorimasa from the year 1180:

“Like a rotten log
Half buried in the ground —
My life, which
Has not flowered, comes
To this sad end.”

Ota Dokan had a less pessimistic poem in 1486:

“Had I not known
That I was dead
Already I would have mourned
My loss of life.”

If the transgression is egregious then seppuku is not granted. Another option is to be given the less honorable sentence of shaving the head and entering a Buddhist monastery. This is where we find Cio-Cio San’s uncle in the role of a bonze.

A bonze is a basic monk or priest in Chinese or Japanese Buddhism. When Cio-Cio San’s uncle enters in the first act to condemn her for dishonoring the family by marrying a Westerner, he is not doing it from the point of view of Buddhism but from the point of view of a fallen samurai who was not given the honor of death.

It seems obvious that Cio-Cio San didn’t run the idea past her uncle first. She is in a desperate situation.

Her circumstances are probably being manipulated by the marriage broker, Goro. Goro stands to gain from Cio-Cio Sans situation and even tries to "double dip" by presenting the prince Yamadori in the second act.

If her uncle was once of a status that he and Cio-Cio San’s father were close to the Shogun then the marriage is a further dishonor for the family. Cio-Cio San is digging the family's grave deeper. Once she is disowned by her family there is no going back.

Understanding the dynamics of Japanese culture that are at play let's us see Cio-Cio San's situation more clearly as she continues to hope against hope that Pinkerton will come back in the second act.

Cio-Cio San is stuck between two worlds.

Madama Butterfly opens at San Diego Opera on April 16 at the Civic Theater downtown.