The Chinese Bell Murders

‘We shall be very happy to publish the stories, but we’ll omit the illustrations’, I once heard a foreign publisher who was planning to publish the Judge Dee detective novels say. When I asked why, the answer was that the drawings did not conform to the modern image of what book illustrations should be. This was true, because Robert van Gulik furnished his Judge Dee novels with illustrations he had drawn himself in the classical Chinese style of the Ming dynasty (1368–1644). It fell to me to convince the publisher that the illustrations were inextricably bound up with the books and the work would be deprived of an important element of its authenticity if they were discarded. The drawings, especially the image of Judge Dee with his judge’s cap and long beard, have become the logo of the world-famous Judge Dee crime stories.

The illustrations were actually drawn in the style of the Ming dynasty, but Judge Dee himself had lived seven centuries earlier, during the Tang dynasty (618–908). Judge Dee (Di Renjie, 630–700) was a historical Chinese judge who ingeniously solved the most complicated murder cases. Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) studied Sinology at Leiden and entered the service of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in The Hague at the age of twenty-four. During his first posting as a diplomat to the Dutch embassy in Tokyo, he chanced upon Judge Dee in an antiquarian bookshop. On a dusty shelf he found a small, rather curious eighteenth-century book about this legendary Chinese judge which he bought in a burst of intuition, but did not pay too much attention at first.

It was pure chance that Van Gulik was later to take a deeper interest in the adventures of Judge Dee. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the declaration of war against Japan in 1941, the allied embassies were evacuated and the Western representatives exchanged. All diplomats were evacuated and embarked on the steamship the Tatsuta Maru which was lying ready in Yokohama Harbour to sail to Africa via Shanghai, Saigon and Singapore. They were allowed only one suitcase. Robert van Gulik grabbed a few Chinese books from his study and stuffed them into his bag. One of these books was the eighteenth-century crime novel about Judge Dee.

During his second posting to the Dutch embassy in Chongqing (Chungking), the war-time capital of China during the Japanese occupation, he re-opened the small book. It was a collection of stories in which the master detective Dee solves three difficult murder cases. A great lover of detective novels himself, he was intrigued by this old Chinese crime novel and decided to translate it into English. He wanted to show Western countries that China had its own detective genre and its own Sherlock Holmes, complete with a Watson. He published the book (Dee Goong An; Three Murder Cases Solved by Judge Dee) in 1949 in a limited edition of twelve hundred signed copies, when he was posted to the Dutch embassy in Tokyo for the second time. He drew the cover illustration himself in the Chinese style, showing the judge-magistrate during a court session seated behind a high bench bedecked with a red cloth and flanked on each side by an assistant. In front of the bench lies a young woman who has been accused of murder and is being harshly interrogated by the judge. Her torso is bare and both her arms are clamped in a formidable rack. He had the plate printed in colour using the Japanese woodblock technique. The book is now a collector’s item.

Judge Dee also became Robert van Gulik’s own hero because a few years later, encouraged by the many enthusiastic reactions he had received to the translation, he brought the master detective of the Tang dynasty back to life in Judge Dee detective novels he had written himself. Through an ingenious plot in an authentic Chinese atmosphere, he allowed the readers of his Judge Dee stories to share in his profound knowledge of Chinese culture and history.

The Chinese Bell Murders was the first Judge Dee novel Robert van Gulik wrote, originally in English, during his second posting to the Dutch embassy in Tokyo. In this book he retained the traditional style of a Chinese crime novel in which the judge-magistrate surrounded by a large number of main and minor characters solves several murders simultaneously. The English manuscript was translated into Japanese and offered to a Japanese publisher who thought the novel unsuitable for publication. His reason was that the story showed the Buddhist clergy in a bad light and this would not have gone down well in overwhelmingly Buddhist Japan. The manuscript disappeared into a drawer of his desk and Van Gulik began his second Judge Dee novel, The Chinese Maze Murders. This manuscript was also offered to the Japanese publisher who was enthusiastic this time, but advised putting a naked woman on the cover, as to make the book sell better. In this way Robert van Gulik, who would only agree to this if he could find an original illustration, stumbled upon the hitherto unknown erotic art of the Ming dynasty. Following the examples he had found and adhering faithfully to the Ming style, he drew a naked woman for the cover (see the Introduction to The Chinese Maze Murders). This illustration stood model for all the other illustrations which he would draw for his Judge Dee novels.

Writing a new Judge Dee novel was a pleasurable form of recreation for Robert van Gulik, done alongside his diplomatic work. Drawing the illustrations was an important part of it. He followed the concept of the taut outlines and the perspective used in most of the book illustrations from the Ming dynasty. He drew his initial concept on white A-4 paper and traced this out with a mapping pen, just as long as it took to achieve the desired result. Consequently there were various versions of most of these illustrations and, even when a new edition of a title was published, he would make changes to some of the drawings. I have often watched my father sitting at his desk, absorbed in a drawing, usually with a cigarette between his lips. I was amazed that he was usually able to flick the ash into the ash-tray just before it might drop onto the tracing-paper and damage the drawing. When this did happen, I had a picture to colour in with my coloured pencils.

The Judge Dee detective series was first published in the Netherlands by the publisher W. Van Hoeve, in The Hague between 1956 and 1964. My father designed the cover of each book himself, using drawings from the book. The Chinese Bell Murders was published in 1960 with the blue and white illustration from page 188 on the front. An ancient temple bell, as high as a man, had been tilted up and underneath Judge Dee and his assistants found a human skeleton, half buried in a thick layer of dust and dirt. White ants and worms had taken care that nothing remained except the white bones. Judge Dee needed all his ingenuity to solve this old murder.