Most of us know the bare bones of the tale of Madama Butterfly: American Naval Lieutenant B.F. Pinkerton takes a Nagasaki bride, one Miss-soon-to-be-Madama Butterfly (also known as Cio-Cio-San). Their Japanese marriage becomes the centre of the fifteen-year-old ex-geisha's existence, while to Pinkerton it is merely an exotic interlude, a kind of delirious mock-up of the real thing, which can only exist in the West – someday in the future-West, when he has finished sewing his wild oats. Pinkerton eventually abandons Butterfly, returning to Nagasaki three years later with a “real” American wife,...