Dawn the next day, in Butterfly’s house.

Butterfly is still keeping vigil, standing motionless. Suzuki and Trouble are asleep. Sailors’ voices carry from the harbour. Suzuki awakens and taps Butterfly on the shoulder. “He’ll come,” Butterfly says. Suzuki urges her to rest. Butterfly takes her sleeping child into his room. Answering a knock at the door, Suzuki is astonished to see Pinkerton and Sharpless. She wants to call Butterfly, but they stop her. Then Suzuki spies a woman in the garden and is devastated to learn that she is Kate, Pinkerton’s new American wife. Sharpless urges her to help them persuade Butterfly to give up her child to Kate. Pinkerton, filled with remorse, rushes out (“Addio, fiorito asil”).

Kate Pinkerton comes in from the garden with the heartbroken Suzuki, promising to take good care of the little boy. Butterfly is heard calling for Suzuki; Kate leaves the room. Suzuki tries in vain to keep Butterfly from coming in, but Butterfly is frantically looking for Pinkerton. She sees only Suzuki, Sharpless, and a strange woman in the garden. When she is told that Pinkerton has arrived but will never return to her, Butterfly realizes that the woman in the garden is his wife and that she has come to take Butterfly’s son. She suppresses her anguish, for she must obey her husband. Kate timidly approaches and asks her forgiveness. Butterfly tells her, “Don’t be sad for me,” and asks that Pinkerton himself come for the child in a half hour.

When Kate and Sharpless leave, Butterfly is overcome by grief. She orders Suzuki to leave with the child. Before a lit lamp in front of a statue of Buddha, she takes out her father’s knife and reads the inscription: “Die with honour, when it is impossible to live with honour.” She is about to stab herself when Suzuki sends in Trouble. Butterfly drops the knife and gathers the child in her arms, kissing him and urging him to remember his mother’s face (“Tu? tu? tu?”). Tearfully saying goodbye and telling him to go play, she sits him by the door, places in his hands an American flag and a toy, and blindfolds him. She then returns to the altar and stabs herself. Dying, she crawls toward the child, embraces him, and falls beside him as Pinkerton is heard shouting for her. He and Sharpless rush into the room; Butterfly points to her child and dies as Pinkerton falls, sobbing, to his knees. Sharpless takes the child into his arms and kisses him.