Modeling Missionary Masculinity: Jesuit Cassocks, Silk Kimono, and Emotions in Sixteenth-Century Japan

This article analyzes the crisis related to garments that characterized the Jesuit mission in Japan during the initial years of the 1570s. It identifies the features of Jesuit masculinity that emerge from one of the few accounts of this crisis, a letter penned by Portuguese missionary Francisco Cabral (1533–1609), highlighting which emotional values and expressions this masculinity envisioned. By analyzing the tenets of Jesuit masculinity in Iberian countries, it then considers how these aspects were framed in relation to possible Japanese counterparts and what objectives this comparison had in the intentions of Francisco Cabral.