Kunio Hara is Associate Professor of Music History at the University of South Carolina. His research interests include operas of Giacomo Puccini, musical representations of nostalgia, animated films of Studio Ghibli, and music in postwar Japan. He has published articles on Puccini’s operas as well as on Tōru Takemitsu’s instrumental music in journals including Journal of the Society of American Music, Music & Politics, Studi pucciniani, and Music and the Moving Image. His most recent essay, “The Racial Politics of Madama Butterfly and Turandot,” is included in Puccini in Context edited by Alexandra Wilson and published by Cambridge University Press. He has given public talks on Madama Butterfly for the Metropolitan Opera, the Boston Lyric Opera, the Atlanta Opera, and Portland Opera. He is also the author of Joe Hisaishi’s Soundtrack for “My Neighbor Totoro” published by Bloomsbury Academic as part of their 33 1/3 Japan series. ABSTRACT: Transpacific Madama Butterfly