Jan Cock Blomhoff was director ("opperhoofd

Opperhoofd

Opperhoofd is a Dutch word which literally means 'supreme head'.The Danish equivalent Overhoved, which is derived from a Danish pronunciation of the Dutch word, is also treated here....

") of Dejima

Dejima

was a small fan-shaped artificial island built in the bay of Nagasaki in 1634. This island, which was formed by digging a canal through a small peninsula, remained as the single place of direct trade and exchange between Japan and the outside world during the Edo period. Dejima was built to...

, the Dutch trading colony in the harbour of Nagasaki, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, 1817 - 1824, succeeding Hendrik Doeff

Hendrik Doeff

Hendrik Doeff was the Dutch commissioner in the Dejima trading post in Nagasaki, during the first years of the 19th century.-Biography:...

.

During his first stay on the island (1809–1813) he had an affair with a Japanese woman and the couple had a child, which died in 1813.

When he arrived in Decima for the second time in August 1817 he was accompanied by his wife Titia Bergsma

Titia Bergsma

Titia Bergsma was a Dutch woman who visited Dejima, Japan in August 1817 with her husband, Jan Cock Blomhoff....

, whom he had married in 1815, his son Johannes, and Petronella Munts, 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 hundred different prints widely circulated throughout the country.