Jan Cock Blomhoff

Who was Jan Cock Blomhoff?

Jan Cock Blomhoff was director of Dejima, the Dutch trading colony in the harbour of Nagasaki, Japan, 1817 - 1824, succeeding Hendrik Doeff.

During his first stay on the island he had an affair with a Japanese woman and the couple had a child, who died in 1813.

When he arrived in Dejima for the second time in August 1817 he was accompanied by his wife Titia Bergsma, whom he had married in 1815, his son Johannes, and Petronella Muns, a Dutch wetnurse and an Indonesian maid. The ladies and the little boy were not allowed to stay. In the short time they stayed there, till December 1817, they were often drawn by artists, who had never seen other than Japanese women, and 500 different prints widely circulated throughout the country.