Cornelis van Nijenroode

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Cornelis van Nijenroode was chief factor of the Dutch East India Company operations in Japan from 1623 to 1632. During his time in Japan, he had relationships with two courtesans of the Maruyama district, and had a daughter with each. With one woman, known only as Surishia, Nijenroode had a daughter in 1630 who they named Cornelia. She went on to have an active life in the Dutch East Indies. With the other woman, Tokeshio, he had a daughter named Esther.

Prior to his time in Japan, van Nijenroode spent some time in Ayutthaya (Siam).[1]

He died in 1633. Cornelia's mother Surishia then married the Hirado-based merchant Handa Goemon.

References

  • Amy Stanley, Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan, UC Press (2012), 77.
  • Gary Leupp, Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900, A&C Black (2003), 117.
  1. Cesare Polenghi, Samurai of Ayutthaya: Yamada Nagamasa, Japanese warrior and merchant in early seventeenth-century Siam. Bangkok: White Lotus Press (2009), 37.