'Madama Butterfly' and the Puccini-esque in Japan: Adaptation, Popularisation and the Search for the Cultural Fusion

This article explores the changing ways in which the Japanese assimilated and evaluated Puccini’s music from 1906 (when the Japanese saw Madama Butterfly for the first time) up to c.1940 (when ‘Fascist’ Japan instigated the politic-cultural ideal, ‘Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’). During that period, Japanese composers were seeking ways to make their cultural identity manifest within the scheme of Western music and Puccini’s use of Japanese themes in Butterfly attracted divided responses – several works in a popular vein achieved a ‘Puccini-esque’ manner, but no ‘serious’ composers found in Puccini an exemplar for their endeavours. Puccini’s music in Japan became a complicated factor that expanded questions of Japan’s internal musicality into those of East versus West, high and low cultures, and pan-national and local approaches. Interestingly enough, this led in the end to various critical evaluations of Puccini in Japan echoing the somewhat negative reactions he received in Italy after the premier of Butterfly.