Photo/Illutration The reproduced Nanban Mochi product in Kyoto’s Kita Ward on Nov. 15 (Kenji Shimizu)

KYOTO--A European-style cake that was likely a favorite of warlord Oda Nobunaga (1534-1582) has been revived despite a dearth of information about the food item.

A professor and a priest worked with a Japanese-style confectionery to put the reproduced cake product, called Nanban Mochi, on sale in mid-November.

Their quest started with only eight letters that appeared in the March 1582 section of Shokuchu Sanyojo, an income and expenditure statement preserved at Kamigamojinja shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage site in Kyoto.

The shrine had connections to Nobunaga.

The passage reads: “Nanban Mochi: Several hundred pieces.”

The word “Nanban,” which literally means “southern barbarians,” was used in medieval Japan to refer to Europeans, typically Spaniards and Portuguese, who visited the country by way of southern seas.

“Mochi” is Japanese for rice cake.

Hiraku Kaneko, a professor of medieval Japanese history at the University of Tokyo’s Historiographical Institute, studied the document.

An expert on Nobunaga studies, Kaneko has been involved in compiling the shrine’s archives.

Nobunaga interacted with Christian missionaries and was interested in Nanban culture.

The old document indicates that Kamigamojinja shrine presented Nobunaga with the Nanban Mochi to congratulate him on his victory over Takeda Katsuyori (1546-1582), the son of famed warlord Takeda Shingen (1521-1573), according to Kaneko.

The word Nanban Mochi, however, appears only once in that document.

“It was a rare food item,” the professor said.

Toshimitsu Takai, Kamigamojinja’s head priest, also took interest in what the Nanban Mochi may have tasted like. He approached Kameya Yoshinaga, a Kyoto-based confectionery founded in the Edo Period (1603-1867), to call for collaboration in April.

Kameya Yoshinaga’s workers referred to available materials, including recipes in the “Nanban Ryorisho” cookbook from the Edo Period, to create a cake product that would match contemporary times.

They used wheat flour, brown sugar and kudzu starch, which they mixed with water and kneaded.

The dough was steamed for about 90 minutes to make the cake, according to Yoshikazu Yoshimura, Kameya Yoshinaga’s eighth-generation master.

“It resembles a steamed bun with a whiff of brown sugar flavor,” Yoshimura said.

It is said that Nobunaga let his own horse compete in Kamo Kurabe-Uma, a traditional horse racing ritual that continues to this day at Kamigamojinja shrine, and watched the race.

“I hope people will think to themselves, as they relish this cake product, that our shrine presented cakes like this to Nobunaga during the Warring States Period (late 15th to late 16th centuries),” Takai said.

The Nanban Mochi is available for 800 yen ($5.12) per pack of four pieces on Kamigamojinja shrine’s precincts.

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