Robert van Gulik
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Robert van Gulik

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The four academic and artistic accomplishments of a traditional Chinese scholar-official are painting, poetry or calligraphy, weiqi (the game of go in Japan), and qin (musicologically closest to zither but culturally to lute), and these are the lifelong pursuits of Robert van Gulik (1910–1967) who, at the time of his death, was the Dutch ambassador to Japan and Korea. Yet, he was different from these literati; unlike them, RvG did not mind getting his hands dirty. He loved framing Chinese pictorial art and mounting calligraphy scrolls. In his younger days, the staging of Javanese shadow plays (wayang) brought him great joy. In Malaya, he teamed up with a Chinese printer to produce the first books from his New Judge Dee Mysteries series. He raised gibbons, and he was an avid collector of objects regardless of their price or condition: he collected them for their historical, cultural, or scientific value.

While still in grammar school, an enterprising young RvG made an all-important connection with the newly retired Professor C.C. Uhlenbeck, the pre-eminent linguist at the time. Professor Uhlenbeck taught him Sanskrit and Russian and conferred him co-authorship of two language reference works on English and Blackfoot, a tribe of North American Algonquian Indians. Professor Uhlenbeck also taught him grammar structures of languages. Throughout his life, RvG used his facility in learning languages for academic studies and as entrances to different cultures.

Many Judge Dee stories appeared as comic strips in Dutch and Scandinavian newspapers, drawn by a draftsman whom he had trained. He loved movies. If he had lived longer, undoubtedly he would have had his Judge Dee mysteries adapted as screenplays and made into movies.

RvG had a great capacity for friendship. In his Judge Dee mysteries, Judge Dee’s deep feelings towards his assistants Hoong Liang and Chiao Tai are movingly described. He sustained his correspondence with Professor Uhlenbeck until his death in 1951. He always acted in the best interest of the Chinese people and the Chinese culture. When The Chinese Maze Murders was first published, the Japanese publisher insisted on a Chinese nude woman on its cover. RvG balked at this request until he learned that China did indeed have an erotic art tradition. He stipulated with his book publishers a clause to have the final approval on the design of the book covers so that Chinese representations would not be distorted.

The best characterization of RvG may be in In Memoriam where Father Roggendorf wrote, “He was an uomo universale, a veritable polymath, such as one would look for in the ages of the Renaissance or the Baroque rather than in our drab century.”
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