“That may be Japanese law … but not in my country!” Marriage, Divorce and Private International Law in Giacomo Puccini’s Madama Butterfly
Abstract
Madama Butterfly is one of the most famous operas by Giacomo Puccini. Set in Japan in 1904, it depicts the tragic love story between B.F. Pinkerton, an officer in the US Navy, and Cio-cio-san (also called Madama Butterfly), a young Japanese girl from Nagasaki.
The libretto (written by Giacosa and Illica – one of whom happened to be a lawyer) is quite interesting from a jurist’s perspective as it mentions a number of legal issues. The pivotal point in the opera is the marriage between the officer and the young Japanese lady. Questions arise about the law applicable to the marriage itself (including the formalities required), that applicable to the matrimonial life, and, more importantly, whether Pinkerton was allowed to unilaterally divorce by abandoning the conjugal house, an option in his view permitted by Japanese law (but of course not allowed under the law of the USA). In the opera, the validity of this option is taken for granted, but a legal, technical analysis leads to a different conclusion.
This paper investigates in detail the legal aspects of Madama Butterfly, in light of the applicable law in Japan in 1904: in particular, the Civil Code of 1898 (Minpō), the Japanese Code of Private International Law (Hōrei) and the Nationality Law (Kokuseki-hō). The story of Pinkerton and Butterfly will be analyzed through the lens of the law to find answers to the following questions: was their marriage validly concluded? Which law regulated their marital life? And most of all: did the law in 1904 allow the husband to unilaterally divorce through abandonment? In trying to deal with these questions, the paper relies on the original text in Italian (of course providing an English translation for the international readership).
In addition to the purely legal analysis of the libretto, this paper would also like to propose a different approach to the very well-known subject of the Japanese legal modernization. The reforms during the Meiji period have been studied in depth by generations of comparative lawyers, mostly from a historical or technical perspective. Works like Madama Butterfly are fascinating pieces of evidence of how Europeans looked at Japan. While of course characterized by major inaccuracies, those works are extremely powerful cultural objects, capable of leaving a strong mark on depictions, (mis)understandings and stereotypes about Japan. From a purely legal perspective, the Meiji Restoration is a unicum in the history of law: no other country could make such a leap forward in the modernization of its legal system, and Japan has been considered a superb case study by generations of comparative lawyers. So using novels, theater plays and opera to read the intense and controversial period of the Meiji Ishin through the lenses of writers, composers and travelers allows us to re-discover issues in a different light.
Finally, this paper intends to offer a contribution to the development of studies in Law and Literature (or “Law in literature” as some scholars would prefer to say in this case) on Japan. This approach, very popular and developed in Europe and the US, is still not so frequently encountered with reference to the Japanese context.
