Judge Dee at Work

Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) is best known for his Judge Dee detective novels in which the Chinese master detective Dee astutely solves the most complicated murders. He was friends with the Dutch crime-writers Ab Visser and Bert Japin, with whom he collaborated in the creation of the Zodiac Mysteries, a series of detective novels in which the particular sign of the zodiac under which the protagonist of each book had been born, played a central role. Bert Japin used to come to visit us in The Hague with his wife and son Arthur, after my father had been re-assigned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for a while after the completion of his term as Dutch ambassador in Kuala Lumpur. We lived in the Ten Hovestraat in a typically stately Hague residence. Although Arthur Japin and I, both then still at primary school, will have come across each other in the Ten Hovestraat, Arthur’s strongest memories are of my father in his study. In his book The Fourth Wall (De Vierde Wand, De Arbeiderpers, 1998), he has written a wonderful account of his meeting with Robert van Gulik in the latter’s Chinese room.

Robert van Gulik studied Sinology in Leiden and then at the age of twenty-four was awarded his doctorate in Utrecht with a thesis about Hayagrīva, a horse-headed Tantric deity in China and Japan. He entered the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in 1935 was posted to the Dutch embassy in Tokyo as a junior diplomat. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the Second World War broke out in the Far East. When war was declared on Japan, all the Allied embassies in Tokyo were evacuated and the Western representatives exchanged. All diplomats had to leave and were embarked on the steamship the Tatsuta Maru which was lying in Yokohama Harbour ready to sail. They were allowed to take only one suitcase. Robert van Gulik snatched a few Chinese books from his study and stuffed them in his bag. One of these books was an eighteenth-century crime novel featuring the legendary Chinese Judge Dee (Di Renjie) as the detective who solves three murder cases.

In one of the stories in his book The Fourth Wall, Arthur Japin enters the Hall where clarity is revered, as my father had called his study in The Hague. This name was written in Chinese characters on a board which hung above the door. Everywhere in the world my father was posted he gave his library another name, one appropriate to the circumstances of that time. In 1941 he named his Tokyo library-cum-study Lute Chamber of the Middle Harmony, because he had gathered a large collection of books and manuscripts about Chinese music. His library in Tokyo was completely lost after his post-haste evacuation. At his next posting in Chongqing (Chungking) in China, my father built up a new library to which he gave the name Studio of what is only left, a name which was actually a word play on the Chinese saying, ‘All my material possessions having become lost, I only retain my firm intentions’. In Chongqing he met a young Chinese woman, Shih-fang Shui, the daughter of a mandarin from Beijing, whom he married in 1943 (see the introduction to The Phantom of the Temple). He and my mother decided that the study should have a more romantic name and the old board was changed for a new one bearing three characters, Yin-yueh-an, which means: Hermitage where one sings to the moon. A calligraphy of this name which hangs above the door of my study in Amsterdam recalls the Hall where clarity is revered, the name of his last study.

Only in Chongqing did he finally find the time to examine the eighteenth-century crime novel about Judge Dee which he had taken with him when he was evacuated from Japan. As a great lover of detective stories, he was intrigued by this ancient Chinese crime novel and decided to translate it into English. He published the translation in a limited edition of 1300 hundred (signed) copies with a cover he had designed himself in the Chinese style (see Dee Goong An, Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee). By making this translation, he wanted to show the West that China had its own detective genre and its own Sherlock Holmes complete with his Watson. The historical Judge Dee was a magistrate of a district, the smallest unit in the ancient Chinese administrative system. As well as being judge, he was also mayor and head of the police, responsible for investigating crimes.

Judge Dee also became Robert van Gulik’s hero because, a few years later, encouraged by the many enthusiastic reactions his translation had elicited, he brought the master detective of the Tang dynasty back to life in the Judge Dee crime novels he wrote himself. He set his stories in the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), a period of great cultural and artistic attainment in China. This allowed him more leeway to develop his stories. In his Judge Dee stories, Robert van Gulik shares his profound knowledge of Chinese culture and history with the reader. An ingenious plot in an authentic Chinese setting, written according to the rules of the Western detective story, lies at the heart of the success of the Judge Dee detective series.

In the Hall where clarity is revered Robert van Gulik sat the young Arthur Japin on a Chinese chair of carved ebony. This throne with a cool marble seat and a back-rest offered a good view of the study and library. This was where my father worked on his Judge Dee novels, surrounded by his books, Chinese antiques and scrolls. Every three or four years the whole collection was packed into chests to make a journey to a new ambassador’s residence in a far distant place or to another house in The Hague. The study was invariably arranged in the same way and, when everything had been unpacked and once again stood in its usual place, I was amazed to see the same rows of books, the ebony book-cases with Chinese books and the many antiques. Some of these objects turn up in the Judge Dee stories, for instance, a small cricket cage in Murder in Canton and the incense clock in Five Auspicious Clouds, one of the seven stories contained in Judge Dee at Work. An antique Chinese sword gleamed in one corner, I think of it as Judge Dee’s famous sword The Rain Dragon. In the middle of the room stood a Chinese desk that was crammed with small sculptures, Chinese seals, brush-holders, ink-stones, a type-writer and an Indian copper ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts, because my father was a chain-smoker. In a side-room/alcove was an ebony altar on which stood the imposing Buddha from Korea and a table with a seven-stringed Ming lute. The bookcases were crammed with rows of English and American detective stories by every conceivable author. He devoured these, reading them whenever he had the time. He had wrapped a red paper band around a number of books; he told me that he thought them good or special for some or other reason.

Between 1950 and 1967, Robert van Gulik wrote sixteen Judge Dee mysteries. Judge Dee at Work is a bundle of eight short stories in which he allows the reader to follow Judge Dee from one provincial city to another in all the stages of his career. His first post was Peng-lai from where he was transferred to Han-yuan. After two years there he was moved on to Poo-yang and then to the small city of Lan-fang. A Judge Dee story in the Zodiac series never eventuated as the series was prematurely discontinued. Nevertheless, Robert van Gulik did have his story for it ready; that same year The Night of the Tiger appeared, in which Judge Dee who was born in the Year of the Tiger in the Chinese zodiac, solves the gruesome murder of a young woman. The Night of the Tiger was published together with The Morning of the Monkey in the book The Monkey and the Tiger.