Kitchens of Dejima: Japanese Cookery and Dutch Sovereignty in Nineteenth-Century Miniatures

Abstract:Through an object-oriented history of Japanese foodways on the move, this article explores how a miniature kitchen diorama collected by Jan Cock Blomhoff in Nagasaki in the 1820s situated Japan within the Netherlands’ narrative of post-Napoleonic national sovereignty. Blomhoff’s kitchen blended a display of Japanese culinary craftsmanship—its tools, vessels, and utensils procured from Japanese artisans—with classical Dutch dollhouse design that evoked Golden Age domestic prosperity, a microcosm of a properly functioning state. Everyday life objects like Blomhoff’s kitchen became powerful symbols for continuity throughout the Netherlands’ era of national dissolution. Despite limited mobility outside Japan during the early modern period, representation of cooking and domestic life through miniaturized kitchen accouterments produced an insistent presence of Japanese foodways in the European imagination.