HomeGroupsTalkMoreZeitgeist
Search Site
This site uses cookies to deliver our services, improve performance, for analytics, and (if not signed in) for advertising. By using LibraryThing you acknowledge that you have read and understand our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Your use of the site and services is subject to these policies and terms.

Results from Google Books

Click on a thumbnail to go to Google Books.

Loading...

Titia: The First Western Woman in Japan

by René Bersma

MembersReviewsPopularityAverage ratingConversations
413,410,100 (2.75)None
Drawn from contemporary documents, private family correspondence and the Deshima logbooks, Titia is neither a history nor a novel or an official biography. Rather, it is a tribute to a woman who achieved an accidental place in history by being the first Western woman to travel to Japan in the 19th century. In violation of the self-imposed policy of isolation decreed during the Edo period (1603-1868), she accompanied her husband, Jan Cock Blomhoff, who was to assume the post as Director of the Dutch trading post on Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese government ordered her deportation. Fortunately, Nagasaki's painters, including Kawahara Keiga, immortalized her before she left three and a half months after her arrival and these depictions were to prove most influential in representations of Western women in Japanese art. Separated from her husband, she died in 1821 of physical and mental exhaustion resulting from her experiences. Set against a backdrop of Post-Napoleonic European politics, this is the first time Titia Cock Blomhoff's tragic story has been told. ( See also the title "The Court Journey to the Shôgun of Japan")… (more)
None
Loading...

Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book.

No current Talk conversations about this book.

Big in Japan

Titia Bergsma was not the first Western woman to visit Japan. After the fall of Dutch Formosa in 1661 some Dutch women had briefly stayed in Japan, but nobody had any recollections of their presence. Titia Bergsma was the first woman who deliberately made the journey to live with her husband Jan Cock Blomhoff on Dejima in Nagasaki Bay in 1817. This went against the practice of sakoku, and she and her baby son were sent back to Batavia after three months. In the mean time, Japanese artists admired this wonder of nature, and portrayed the plain looking woman in various forms. In 2007 there were still some 150 products with her image sold in Japan.

The Japanese and the Dutch were both excellent bookkeepers of each other's actions. Still there is not much material about Titia Bergsma, who lived the life of a housewife and who died relatively young, as a footnote of history. Unfortunately the author seems to have romanticised part of the book, by stating explicit actions and emotions that must have been difficult to extract from later family memoirs. The boundary of fact and fiction is not always clear.

Titia Bergsma was the daughter of an affluent lawyer in Friesland. In 1804 she had met Blomhoff who was working out of Emden at the time. Earlier he had joined the stadtholder when he escaped to Britan. Blomhoff went to the Indies to seek his fortune and landed a job in Japan in 1809. During that time he fathered a child with the Japanese courtesan Itoagi, who was allowed to live with him as his maid. In 1813 Blomhoff was arrested in Batavia after negotiations with governor Raffles about British access to Japan. Raffles was angered about Blomhoff’s defence of Dutch exclusivity (Dejima was the only place on the globe where the Dutch tricolour flew in the days of French and British occupation), and sent him to London were he was briefly imprisoned before his return to Holland.

In the mean time Titia had moved with her parents to The Hague, where she and Blomhoff met and married within four months. After serving the military for over a year, they sailed to Batavia, together with their first-born child and a wet nurse. Here they lived with their servants in the suburb of Rijswijk. Blomhoff had obtained the lucrative position as head of Dejima and claimed that sakoku was no longer so strictly enforced. Blomhoff's case was accepted by the government in Batavia.

Titia Bergsma's arrival in Dejima was immediate news: nobody had ever seen a woman with her colour of hair, round eyes, empire dress with cleavage, straight way of walking and perfume. All day she was followed around by curious Japanese on the little island.

The next morning a request was made to the shogun's court in Edo for Titia to stay on the basis of Blomhoff's bad health and his tough negotiations for Dutch-Japanese relations with Raffles, while Titia was still followed around by curious Japanese. The beauty of Titia and her wet nurse and their dresses were included in reports, as was the egalitarian behaviour of Blomhoff and his wife: they used to walk hand in hand on the island, instead of Titia going two yards behind her husband. The artist Kawahara Keiga and Ishizaki Yushi came to paint Titia in various poses, usually with other members of her entourage. Their paintings were later copied and distributed across Japan.

The request for Titia to stay was however rejected within a few weeks. She, her son, the wet nurse and the Javanese maid had to leave Japan on the same ship. A petition by the retiring chief Hendrik Doeff was not even sent to the shogun. Neither was her secret last minute request. The governor of Nagasaki lost his job for even letting the women alight from the ship. Blomhoff reported in the Daily Register that he found the order inhumane.

Titia travelled first to Batavia and then back to Holland in a pregnant state. Titia reached Den Helder shortly before she was expected to give birth, and managed to get on a potato boat to her mother-in-law in Amsterdam. There it appeared Titia had only shown a phantom pregnancy. When her son met his grandparents he could only speak Malay to them.

Titia would never see her husband again. She would die in The Hague at age 36 in 1821. Blomhoff stayed in Japan until 1823. He made the court trip to Edo, saw Itoagi again, organised an operetta in Nagasaki and taught English to the translators. He would remarry upon his return to Holland. ( )
2 vote mercure | Nov 28, 2011 |
no reviews | add a review
You must log in to edit Common Knowledge data.
For more help see the Common Knowledge help page.
Canonical title
Original title
Alternative titles
Original publication date
People/Characters
Important places
Important events
Related movies
Epigraph
Dedication
First words
Quotations
Last words
Disambiguation notice
Publisher's editors
Blurbers
Original language
Canonical DDC/MDS
Canonical LCC

References to this work on external resources.

Wikipedia in English

None

Drawn from contemporary documents, private family correspondence and the Deshima logbooks, Titia is neither a history nor a novel or an official biography. Rather, it is a tribute to a woman who achieved an accidental place in history by being the first Western woman to travel to Japan in the 19th century. In violation of the self-imposed policy of isolation decreed during the Edo period (1603-1868), she accompanied her husband, Jan Cock Blomhoff, who was to assume the post as Director of the Dutch trading post on Deshima in the Bay of Nagasaki. The Japanese government ordered her deportation. Fortunately, Nagasaki's painters, including Kawahara Keiga, immortalized her before she left three and a half months after her arrival and these depictions were to prove most influential in representations of Western women in Japanese art. Separated from her husband, she died in 1821 of physical and mental exhaustion resulting from her experiences. Set against a backdrop of Post-Napoleonic European politics, this is the first time Titia Cock Blomhoff's tragic story has been told. ( See also the title "The Court Journey to the Shôgun of Japan")

No library descriptions found.

Book description
Haiku summary

Current Discussions

None

Popular covers

Quick Links

Rating

Average: (2.75)
0.5
1
1.5
2
2.5 1
3 1
3.5
4
4.5
5

Is this you?

Become a LibraryThing Author.

 

About | Contact | Privacy/Terms | Help/FAQs | Blog | Store | APIs | TinyCat | Legacy Libraries | Early Reviewers | Common Knowledge | 203,186,984 books! | Top bar: Always visible