Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton was a US Navy lieutenant who was stationed in Japan during the early 1900s. In 1904, he married a local woman, Chocho-san, only to abandon her for three years as he returned home, married an American woman, and started a family of his own. When he returned to Japan with his wife in order to retrieve his child by Chocho-san, Chocho-san was heartbroken by Pinkerton's betrayal of her love, causing her to commit seppuku and to die in Pinkerton's arms.
Biography
Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton was born in the United States, and he enlisted in the US Navy and served aboard USS Lincoln in the Pacific. Pinkerton was a swashbuckler at heart who dreamed of finding short-term love at every port he was posted to, while his ultimate goal was to start a "proper American family" back in the United States.
Stationing in Nagasaki
Pinkerton drinking with Joseph Sharpless, 1904
In 1904, he and the crew of the USS Lincoln were temporarily stationed in Nagasaki, Japan, where Pinkerton took advantage of Japan's lax property laws to rent out a house on a hilltop for 999 years, with the freedom to cancel the agreement any month he chose. He also recruited the marriage broker Goro Toshitake to find him a wife so that he could have companionship during his posting to Japan, and, through him, he married the 15-year-old girl Chocho-san, a resident of Nagasaki's Omara section, with whom he had become infatuated with due to her charm and her youth. However, he told the US consul, Joseph Sharpless, that he also intended to take advantage of Japan's lax divorce laws to end their marriage when the time was right, and Sharpless criticized Pinkerton's idealism about having romantic adventures at every port as "an easy philosophy" and asked Pinkerton if he really loved Chocho-san (whom Pinkerton called "Butterfly").
Wedding
Pinkerton meeting Chocho-san
Nevertheless, Pinkerton went ahead with the wedding, with Consul Sharpless, the Imperial High Commissioner Kagae Harusane, and the Registry Official Kushizu Michiari presiding over its certification. Pinkerton was enamored with Chocho-san, even after she told him that her family had become very poor after losing their wealth in a typhoon, and that her father was dead. He helped her to move in to his hilltop house, which was staffed by a butler, cook, and maid, but he showed his cultural insensitivity when he toyed with "dolls" which Chocho-san then told him represented the souls of her ancestors; nevertheless, while setting up her altar, she also put up an icon of Jesus, revealing that she had converted to Christianity in anticipation of her marriage, although her uncle (a Shintoist bonze priest) and the rest of her family were unaware. The two then married in a ceremony attended by Chocho-san's large family, and Michiari wished Pinkerton prosperity and many children, with Pinkerton joking that he would try. Just then, Chocho-san's uncle, the bonze, crashed the wedding celebration and cursed the couple due to Chocho-san's renunciation of her family's faith, and her family joined her uncle in disavowing her. Pinkerton comforted her, and she was reassured that, even though her family had disavowed her, she was in good hands. Pinkerton was initially surprised that Chocho-san had not yet told him that she loved him, but she said that she only refrained from doing so because she feared she might die if she said the words, and she then told Pinkerton that she liked him from the moment she first saw him due to his height, his laugh, and his kind words. They then spent their first night together, with Pinkerton promising that he would be with Chocho-san for life.
Departure and return
Pinkerton holding Chocho-san's body
Pinkerton's ship eventually set sail from Japan, leaving Chocho-san to raise their newborn child, Dolore, on her own. Pinkerton was absent for three years on naval duties, and, during that time, he remarried to an American woman named Kate. In 1907, he returned to Japan after being stationed in China, and he brought his wife Kate with him, as Kate had agreed to take in Benjamin's son Dolore as her own child. Pinkerton was joined by Sharpless, Suzuki, and Kate as he travelled up the hill to his old house, but, upon seeing how Chocho-san had decorated it in anticipation of his return, Pinkerton was guilt-wracked and delegated the responsibility of letting Chocho-san know about the arrangement to Sharpless. Chocho-san told Sharpless that she would agree to hand over her child if Pinkerton himself would come inside, but, by the time Pinkerton came into the house, Chocho-san had blindfolded their child and committed seppuku with her father's wakizashi, dying in a distraught Pinkerton's arms.