Japan Book Review: Goodbye Madam Butterfly: Sex, Marriage and the Modern Japanese Woman
by Sumie Kawakami
ISBN: 978-0974199535
Chin Music Press, 2007
221 pp; hardcover
Loveless, sexless and often hopeless, yet they keep trudging along.
Goodbye Madam Butterfly, clearly named with a nod to John Luther Long's famous 1898 short story Madam Butterfly, is a book based on author Sumie Kawakami's early 2000s interviews with Japanese women who volunteered their sad stories, most all of whom thought their stories merely mundane.
After the interviews, Kawakami came to the conclusion that, "while the sex industry maintains a high profile in Japan, the nation doesn't seem to be having much actual sex."
Like Long's book (later turned into the Puccini 1904 three-act Italian opera Madama Butterfly), things are bleak, but not quite as depressing and anger-inducing as the original Madame Butterfly. It seems there is a lot of "gaman" (enduring) among Japanese women.
Most of the women interviewed in this book are divorced single mothers, although some are still married and some don't have children. If you know Japanese culture well, you can guess most of the reasons why there is not much sex going on.
Kawakami tells 11 tales from her interviews with the women. Actually, one story is told from the perspective of a man who runs a clinic for male "sex volunteers." One of his (unpaid) volunteers sees his job as a kind of "rehabilitation program" for women not getting regular sex. He handles (so to speak) all kinds of women.
"…we can never fail, even if they are very fat, very ugly or physically disabled," he said. How altruistic of him.
The chapters are unrelated to each other, other than having lack-of-sex related themes.
While in some books skipping the preface isn't a bad idea, doing so with the book would be a mistake. There is a lot of good background information and explanation for the reasons of what is upcoming.
Readers might expect that since the book was written by a woman who interviewed unhappy women, that men would really come in for a kicking. Well, yes, they do, but the blame for the unhappiness seems to be shared pretty equally. Also, the way some women treat other women will make you cringe.
Kawakami's writing style is simple and direct. There is little to no analysis, either of each individual case or of Japanese society in general. Readers may wish there had been a bit of analysis, but that didn't happen.
Final note: How little sex is happening in Japan? In early 2026 the Japanese government announced that the number of children in Japan has declined…for the 44th straight year.
Review by Marshall Hughes, author of Rural Reflections: What 11 Years in Provincial Japan Taught Me.
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