Hendrik Caspar Romberg was the son of Zacharias Romberg, a bookprinter/seller on
Spui in Amsterdam. Hendrik was baptized not in the opposite Lutheran church, but at home. In 1763 he traveled to Batavia in East Asia with the
Dutch East Indies Company (or
Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie or VOC in Dutch). Ten years later he was appointed in
Deshima as bookkeeper. Romberg spent more than ten years in Japan. It seems he was good-looking and had an affair with a Japanese prostitute. He was the
Opperhoofd, head of VOC trading post, during four discrete periods: • 27 October 1782 – August 1783 • November 84 – 21 November 1785 • 21 November 1786 – 30 November 1787 • 1 August 1789 – 13 November 1790 Romberg traveled five times to
Edo. On 1 May 1789, he attended a theater performance in
Osaka. In April 1787 he presented the lord of
Satsuma a sweet wine from
Jurançon. In 1788 he met with
Shiba Kōkan, interested in Western painting, and technique. Romberg's account of the
Sangoku-maru is a scant record of the brief attempt by the
Tokugawa shogunate to create a sea-going vessel in the 1780s. The ship sank; and the tentative project was abandoned when the political climate in Edo shifted. In the off-years, he spent time in
Batavia, which was at that time the VOC headquarters in the East Indies. The registers also listed him as chief warehouseman and paymaster. ==Notes==