=UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY= Vol. 4 No. 1 THE EARLIEST HISTORICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN MEXICO AND JAPAN FROM ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS PRESERVED IN SPAIN AND JAPAN BY ZELIA NUTTALL BERKELEY THE UNIVERSITY PRESS APRIL, 1906 =UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PUBLICATIONS AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY AND ETHNOLOGY= =VOL. 4= =NO. 1= THE EARLIEST HISTORICAL RELATIONS BETWEEN MEXICO AND JAPAN (FROM ORIGINAL DOCUMENTS PRESERVED IN SPAIN AND JAPAN.) BY ZELIA NUTTALL. PUBLISHED BY THE CROOKER FUND FOR RESEARCH IN MEXICO. It is strange but true, that whereas for many years past much has been said and written about the hypothetical transmission of Asiatic influences to Mexico and Central America by means of the ship-wrecked crews of Japanese junks, the precise date when official relations were first established between Japan and Mexico has only just been ascertained. It is Señor C. A. Lera, the actual Mexican Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Japan and China, who deserves the credit of having instituted researches in archives and annals of Japan and succeeded in finding therein the documentary evidence which a countryman of his, Angel Nuñez Ortega, had vainly endeavored to find in the national archives of Mexico. With the coöperation of Father Steichen, a learned missionary residing in Japan, who is known as the author of a History of Japanese Commerce, Señor Lera obtained translations of important original documents, and incorporated them in a report to the Mexican Minister of Foreign Affairs, which was privately printed in Tokio in pamphlet form a few months ago, under the title of “First Official Relations Between Japan and Spain With Respect to Mexico.”