John Luther Long (1861–1927)

An american man buys a wife while visiting japan it goes about as well as you'd expect.
I'm torn on this one, its heroine is pretty silly and therefore hard to sympathize with. Also it uses a lot of broken english which really gets annoying.
However its plot is excellent and almost makes up for these faults.

This is the story on which Puccini's famous opera was based. It's not well written and is hideously racist. I don't much recommend it. Personally, I'd avoid the opera as well. I saw it and it was much more boring than one's average opera. Gah!

Well, perhaps I'm a bit harsh. The second half wasn't so bad. So, I'd give it a ** were that possible, so as to indicate the less bad second half.

Basically, one has a sailor stationed in Japan, Pinkerton. He decides to "take a wife", Cho Cho San, who show more is Japanese. They set up housekeeping. Then, he's off back at sea. Cho Cho San thinks he'll come back, but he really has no intention to do so. She and Pinkerton have a child together, although the child was born after Pinkerton has left. The child has purple eyes.

Anyway, Cho Cho San keeps waiting for Pinkerton to return, but when he does, he doesn't visit Cho Cho San. He does send his actual wife up to Cho Cho San's to fetch his son. Cho Cho San feels betrayed and commits suicide. Gah! What beasts these military types can be when pleasuring themselves at the expense of the "natives". show less

Dnf. This was a bizarre and somewhat disturbing short story that I stopped listening to about halfway through. I expected it to be a story for kids, but there’s no way I’d give it to a child to read. I know a little about Japanese culture and religion, and this gave me some context to the story, but it was still an unpleasant tale.