Emphasizing the conflicted transcultural encounter portrayed in Madama Butterfly, this book examines nineteenth-century treaty-port culture and the eye-witness account that underlies the opera, addresses questions of race and gender in its representation of the heroine, and explores the opera's controversial reception in Japan. Archival sources, many unpublished, reveal how Puccini and his librettists imbued the opera with differing constructions of the action and its heroine.