Passenger 21: Evidence of Tablada's trip to Japan in 1900

Abstract

This paper presents evidence on the controversial trip of José Juan Tablada to Japan in 1900. Most scholarship studying the book of chronicles En el pais del sol (1919) refers to the lack of evidence of José Juan Tablada's trip to Yokohama. Until now there was no concrete evidence to prove his travel, beyond the book mentioned and some watercolors. As a result of a search at the National Archives in San Francisco among the documents that record the arrival of travelers, I found that passenger twenty-one was, indeed, Tablada, who traveled back from Yokohama on December 5, 1900 to arrive in San Francisco on December 22 aboard the ship "America Maru". This was a crucial trip for Tablada, which marked a watershed moment in his artistic creation and reaffirmed his intellectual passion for the land the sun.