TITIA: The First Western Woman in Japan, by Rene P. Bersma. Amsterdam: Hotei Publishing, 2002, 140 pp. with 37 plates, $17.50 (paper)

One August afternoon in 1817, a Dutch ship entered Nagasaki and anchored in the bay. Waiting for clearance was Jan Cock Blomhoff, the new director of the Dutch trading mission on the little man-made island of Deshima, his wife, Titia, and their young child.

On shore there was consternation. The Japanese officials had received word from Batavia that there were a woman and a baby on board, that they expected to land and live on Deshima. This was in direct contradiction to the shogunate's policy of seclusion.

When Blomhoff had been earlier stationed at the island, he had sired a child by a local woman of pleasure, a member of the group periodically herded into the place for the relief of the Dutch. This infant had been allowed to remain until it expired half a year later. In this case the mother was Japanese and the child contained at least as much Japanese as Dutch blood. There was absolutely no precedent, however, for allowing in a foreign woman with her foreign child.