In 1817 Jan Cock Blomhoff travelled to Japan and brought with him his young wife Titia and his son. Never before did a Western woman set foot on Japanese soil and the Japanese were astonished. Author and distant relative of Titia René Bersma relates the exceptional and dramatic story of this woman who sails her own course, against all rules of precedent which governed Japanese society at that time, but in the end is forced to leave the country. Shortly after her arrival back in Holland she dies of exhaustion and sorrow. Titia's image has played an important role in the depiction of Western women in Japanese pictorial art.