Necklace and Calabash

It was a tense time at the Dutch embassy in Tokyo when World War II broke out in the Far East in the wake of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. On 7 December 1941, a commissioner of the Japanese police presented himself and his team at the gate of the embassy with an order pertaining to the embassy compound. The commissioner read the letter aloud in the presence of the embassy staff. A young Dutch diplomat of commanding height stepped forward and asked the commissioner in fluent, formal Japanese if he could have a look at the letter. Absolutely astonished that this Westerner had addressed him in formal Japanese, the commissioner handed him the letter. After reading it, the diplomat held forth at some length over the style of the letter and he praised the writer for the very fine calligraphy in which it was written. The writer must be a man of extraordinary literary talent. The commissioner, who had composed the letter himself in a cursive hand in the classical Japanese style, left the embassy compound with his men deeply impressed, taking the letter with him. The order with which he came was suspended, much to the relief of the embassy staff.

The young Dutch diplomat was Robert van Gulik (1910–1967), in his first posting after entering the service of the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague at the age of twenty-four. He had studied Chinese in Leiden and had been awarded his doctorate degree in Utrecht for a study of the Tantric horse god in China and Japan. He had learned to speak and write fluent Chinese and Japanese, making a special study of classical Chinese literature, painting and calligraphy. After war had been declared on Japan, all allied diplomats were evacuated from Tokyo. A ship was moored ready for them in the harbour of Yokohama, clearly painted with emblems of the Red Cross so that she would not be targeted by torpedoes or air attacks. On their voyage the diplomats were restricted to one suitcase each. Robert van Gulik grabbed a couple of rather flimsy Chinese books from his study and stuffed them in his bag. As chance would have it, one of this small books was an eighteenth-century crime novel about a historical judge called Dee (Di Renjie, 630–700).

In 1943, as a China expert Van Gulik was posted to Chongqing (Chungking), the wartime capital of China, where the Dutch embassy was stationed during the Japanese occupation of Beijing. During the war years, the Chinese literary and artistic elite gathered in this city. Van Gulik made many friends among the Chinese scholars and artists into whose circle he had been accepted as a kindred spirit. He had developed his own flowing style of writing Chinese characters, a calligraphy which was known to the Chinese literati as the style of ‘Gao Luopei (高羅佩)’, the Chinese literary name of Robert van Gulik. His friends called him ‘the Dutch mandarin’, the title used in old China for a high-ranking civil servant and man of letters.

In the heady atmosphere of Chongqing, Robert van Gulik discovered Judge Dee. The flimsy book which he had taken with him when he was evacuated was a collection of stories in which the historical master detective Dee solved three difficult murders. As he was himself an avid fan of detective stories, he translated this old Chinese detective story into English, with the intention of showing the West that China had its own detective genre and its own Sherlock Holmes or Maigret. Encouraged by the many enthusiastic reactions he received for his translation, including one from Agatha Christie, Robert van Gulik decided to write some new crime stories in which this master detective from the Tang would be the principal character. The combination of a thrilling crime story with an authentic Chinese atmosphere lay behind the success of the Judge Dee mysteries. The series has been translated into twenty-nine languages and published in many countries; most recently in China where readers can now enjoy new stories about their world famous Judge Dee.

Alongside his work as a diplomat Van Gulik continued to busy himself with his sinological research and Chinese calligraphy, the chief accomplishment of the Chinese man of letters. My father would regularly practise his calligraphy in his study in the ambassador’s residence wherever he happened to be in the world or in our house in The Hague. He created an archive of characters on invitation cards from the embassy which had been left behind after a reception; he cut the cards into quarters and wrote a character on the back. When he wrote on a large sheet of paper, the dining table was cleared and he first practised the characters using a brush and black ink on newspaper. These characters had to be committed to paper perfectly in one sweeping movement; its combination of form and meaning is what makes calligraphy an art form. Sometimes a drop of black ink would fall on the cuff of his white shirt, where it remained as Chinese ink cannot be washed out.

By looking at the style and form of the characters in a Chinese text, Judge Dee was able to deduce whether the writer was educated or not, poet or merchant — clues which often helped him in his investigations. As magistrate and man of letters, he wrote in a cursive style as he became a high-ranking official in ancient China. The bench in the courtroom was never without a writing-brush and ink stone; black for ordinary matters and vermilion for official documents and the signature of the judge. Before writing, he would moisten the head of the brush in his mouth to smooth the hairs. Of course he took care, because he knew from the old crime literature that a covertly applied poison could turn the brush into a murder weapon!

Having filled missions and posts in Africa, China, the United States, India, the Middle East, Malaysia and Korea, interspersed with periods at the home office in The Hague, in 1965 Robert van Gulik was appointed Dutch ambassador in Tokyo. The same embassy in which he had begun his diplomatic career as second secretary in 1935 was to be his last post, as he died in 1967 while he was on sick leave in The Hague. He wrote Necklace and Calabash, his last but one Judge Dee novel, in Tokyo in 1966. After having appeared in fourteen earlier novels, Judge Dee had developed as a character. He had just solved a number of difficult murders at his post in Kao-yang (Poo-yang), when his assistance is called upon in River Town which he was passing through. He is caught up in the court intrigues in the Water Palace where the Third Princess, the Emperor’s favourite daughter, is in residence. In Necklace and Calabash Judge Dee is on his own, without the support of his faithful assistants, but at crucial moments he is helped by Master Calabash, an itinerant Taoist monk both whose legs are crippled and whose only possessions are a calabash and a donkey. As a civil servant, Judge Dee is a fervent disciple of Confucianism, the state religion based on a system of moral guidance for good behaviour. He does not want anything to do with Buddhism which had been imported from India. However, he encounters himself in the mystical figure of Master Calabash.

The Dutch embassy in Tokyo is still situated on a hill, surrounded by a luxuriant garden. In this garden stands the Robert van Gulik Pavilion, called after a polymath Dutch diplomat who liked to receive guests there. He gave the pavilion the name: ‘Garden of Dreams’. He wrote the calligraphy of the two Chinese characters which are carved into a wooden board which still hangs in the pavilion. I would not be surprised if Master Calabash had not once paid him a visit there.