Hendrik Caspar Romberg

11 October 1744 – 15 April 1793)[1] was a Dutch bookkeeper, merchant-trader and VOC Opperhoofd in Japan.

[4] He was the Opperhoofd, head of VOC trading post, during four discrete periods: Romberg traveled five times to Edo.

[9] In 1788 he met with Shiba Kōkan, interested in Western painting, and technique.

[10] 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.