A Spanish Novelist’s Tour of Japan: The Image of Vicente Blasco Ibáñez in the Yomiuri Shimbun (1923-1928)

On the afternoon of December 23, 1923 Vicente Blasco Ibáñez (1867-1928) disembarked at the Port of Yokohama to begin a 10-day tour of Japan. Awaiting the arrival of Spain’s most-famous-living-writer was a delegation of representatives from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Tokyo Foreign Language College. The Japanese press covered extensively his official reception and the events of his stay in Tokyo, which included gala meals at the Imperial Hotel and the famous Koyokan Restaurant, and a daylong symposium on Spanish letters at the offices of the daily Hōchi Shimbun. These news items were accompanied by announcements of the premiere of Blood and Sand (Paramount 1922), the Hollywood adaptation of his 1908 novel Sangre y arena, and the publication of translations of this and several other of his most popular novels.²

The Yomiuri Shimbun was the first paper to announce the novelist’s planned visit in a half-page article on August 6, 1923. In the months leading up to his arrival, and in the following years, this initial story was followed-up by a series of articles profiling his achievements as a novelist, journalist and filmmaker, and highlighting his activities as the standard-bearer of the Spanish Republican movement. The way in which the item was expanded in the Yomiuri, and echoed in other Tokyo and Osaka dailies (Ashahi, Mai-nichi and Hōchi), as well as in progressive magazines like Kaizō, reflects the fact that Blasco was the most widely translated and read European novelist of the day. At the same time, however, the particular enthusiasm and interest shown towards him in 1923-24, and in the years leading up to his death in 1928, suggest that deeper ties existed between the Spanish writer and the Japanese press of the late Taisho period (1912-1926).

Taking into account the peculiarities of the Japanese newspaper in the 1920s, an examination of the way in which Blasco is presented in different Tokyo-based dailies and magazines, by different journalists, offers invaluable insight into how the author connected with the preoccupations and aspirations of society under the Taisho Democracy. Furthermore, his presence in the press of day also points to the way in which Spain was perceived from Japan, and Spanish literature participated in the period phenomenon of “translation culture” “honyaku bunka.” Illustrative of the phenomenon of Blasco’s popularity in Japan, is the coverage he received on the pages of the Yomiuri Shimbun in five articles by translator and Tokyo Foreign Language College professor Shizuo Kasai (1895-1989). The articles that appeared between August 1923 and January 1928 in the paper’s well-regarded daily literary section provide a context in which to study the nature of the author’s notoriety in Japan, and to interpret his impact on Japanese culture and politics. Examination of Kasai’s presentation of Blasco’s literature and politics in the Yomiuri reveals the aspects of the public persona as well as the novelist that spoke most directly to Japanese readers in the shifting cultural and political landscape of Taisho Japan.

When Blasco arrived in Yokohama in 1923, to the vexation of many of his contemporaries at home, he was an international celebrity known as much for his literature as for his outspoken commentary on some of the most urgent issues of the day. The box-office successes of film adaptations of his 1917 international-bestseller Los cuatro jinetes del Apocalipsis (Metro 1921), and of the already mentioned Sangre y arena, only augmented his prestige and acclaim as a novelist. A flamboyant self-promoter, entrepreneur and political rabble-rouser, Blasco embraced fame without losing sight of his commitment to forging social and political change in Spain, and around the globe. Even though today he remains a controversial figure, and the quality of literary production continues to be debated, he is widely recognized as a pioneer of harnessing the emerging technologies of popular culture and mass media (newspaper, penny novels, feuilleton, cinema) of the early-twentieth century...