“Send Me Some Good Muscatel Wine” The Shopping Lists of the European Jesuits in Japan, c. 1603–1604. The Case of Grape Wine s

Since their arrival in Japan in 1549, Jesuit missionaries described the cultural and dietary challenges of adapting to the local environment. Staples of their southern European refectories – grape wine, bread, cheese, meat, and sugary confections – were largely unknown or rarely consumed in early modern Japanese society. Even as they gradually accommodated local customs, the fathers continued to depend on annual shipments of familiar provisions carried by merchant vessels from Portugal until the 1639 prohibition of Christian and Iberian presence. The culinary dimension of this global circulation of tastes survives in a series of missionary “shopping lists” compiled by the Jesuits in Japan. Focusing on grape wine shipments, this article shows that such goods were far more than commodities: they served as nourishment for the body, symbols of continuity, and markers of belonging, revealing how familiar tastes reinforced identities and helped negotiate displacement in early modern cross-cultural encounters.