Hendrik Caspar Romberg (bapt. 11 October 1744 - 15 April 1793)[1] was a Dutch bookkeeper, merchant-trader and VOC Opperhoofd in Japan.
Hendrik Caspar Romberg was the son of Zacharias Romberg, a bookprinter/seller on Spui in Amsterdam.[2] Hendrik was baptized not in the opposite Lutheran church, but at home.[3] 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 had an affair with a Japanese prostitute.[4]
He was the Opperhoofd, head of VOC trading post, during four discrete periods:
Romberg traveled five times to Edo.[6] In an 1789 (May 1) he attended a theater performance in Osaka.https://brill.com/display/book/9789004473591/BP000052.xml (p. 595)ref>http://www.librairie-du-cardinal.com/userfiles/LDC_Cat_AS.pdf In April 1787 he presented the lord of Satsuma a sweet wine from Jurançon.[7] In 1788 he met with Shiba Kōkan, interested in Western painting, and technique.[8] 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.[9]
In the off-years, he spent time in Batavia, which was at that time the VOC headquarters in the East Indies.[10] The registers also listed him as chief warehouseman and paymaster.[11]