Esther van Nijenroode

Esther van Nijenroode was the daughter of Dutch East India Company factor and a Japanese courtesan named Tokeshio.

She was born in Nagasaki. Following her father's death in 1633, Esther and her half-sister Cornelia van Nijenroode were taken in by the Company, who paid their mothers substantial sums in exchange for being permitted to take the girls out of the country, and to Batavia in 1636. Both were there placed in an orphanage, and raised as Protestant Christians. Esther left the orphanage in 1644 and married an English lieutenant, who died several years later.

References

• Gary Leupp, Interracial Intimacy in Japan: Western Men and Japanese Women, 1543-1900, A&C Black (2003), 117.