Sinologue Extraordinaire
Originally published in "Hemisphere", Australia August, 1968
by Chen Chih-Mai
When Dr. Robert Hans van Gulik died in The Hague in September 1967, the
world press identified him as (1) a Dutch career diplomat whose last
post was as his country's Ambassador to Japan, and (2) the author of
a long series of detective stories featuring the Chinese statesman of
the T'ang Dynasty, Dee Jen-djieh, who was such a master in solving
strange and complicated murder cases.
Dr. van Gulik was indeed a diplomat of out-standing abitities and
accomplishments, having served in a number of important and sensitive
posts--Japan, China, the United States, India, Lebanon, Syria, Malaysla
and Kqrea, besides several terms of duty in the Foreign Ministry in The
Hague. Over a period of some fifteen years, he also wrote a number of
detective stories, all with Judge Dee as the principal character
against the background of T'ang Dynasty China.
But he was much more than a diplomat and a mystery story writer. From
his early youth, he devoted himself to the study of Chinese and
Japanese language and literature. He was a serious student of
Oriental history and culture.In the course of a lifetime, he produced a
number of books and monographs which are universally regarded as
penetrating and authoritative, often in areas seldom frequented by
other Sinologues.
Languages came naturally to him. He learned them eagerly, but more as
tools in academic work than as means of social contacts. His emphasis
was on the ability to read a foreign language rather than to speak it
well. He spoke all the foreign languages with a strong Dutch accent,
but because of his familiarity with them, he was easily understood. His
method of language training was translation, usually from various
foreign languages into Dutch or English.
Born in Zutphen, The Netherlands, in 1910, the fifth son of
Lieutenant-General Willera van Gulik of the Dutch Army, he went to
the Dutch East Indies when he was four years old. He stayed there for
nine years, attending schools in Batavia and Surahaya, where he learned
the Indonesian language. In 1923 he returned to The Netherlands and was
enrolled in the Grammar School at Nijmegen. Upon graduation, he went on
to the State University at Leiden, where he studied law and polity as
well as Chinese language and literature. In the University, he also
acquired a command of the languages commonly required in European
university courses--Latin and Greek, English, French and German. Upon
receiving his Bachelor's degree, he transferred to the State University
at Utrecbt where he pursued advanced studies under the famous
linguist Professor C. C. Uhlenbeck, learning Sanskrit and Tibetan,
while continuing his study of Chinese and Japanese. He even helped
Professor Uhlenbeck in compiling an English Blackfoot dictionary,
Blackfoot being the language of a tribe of American lndians. His
versatility in languages, ancient and modern, is evidenced' by his
doctoral dissertation at the University at Utrecht, the subject of
which is:
Hayagriva, the Mantrayanic Aspect of the Horse-cult in China and Japan,
with an Introduction on the horse-cult in India and Tibet.
With this highly technical monograph, he was awarded the D.Litt (cure
laude) in 1935.
His writing career began early. When he was sixteen, still a pupil in
the Grammar School, he began contributing poems and articles to his
school publication Rostra, starting with a series called Tales from the
Beautiful Island, nostalgic sketches of his boyhood experiences in
Indonesia which were, as he recalled them, "typically adolescent,
pseudo-love and Pseudo-philosophical,,. He began writing on China
when he was eighteen, notes and comments on classical Chinese
literature and the arts. He was so well regarded that he was soon asked
to contribute entries on China to the Winkler Prins Encyclopedic, the
big Dutch encyclopedia. Under the expert guidance of Pro-fessor
Uhlenbeck, he translated from Sanskrit into Dutch the Urvaci, a play in
poetry by the great Sanskrit poet Kalidasa of the fifth century. In a
note Dr. van Gulik made later, he said that "the translation is
correct, being made under the guidance of Professor Uhlenbeck, but
the Dutch style stilted, greatly influenced by my translations from
Latin and Greek". He also noted that he decorated the book with
vignett~ S which he drew after old Indian paintings. This point is of
particular interest, for all his books and articles, including his
detective stories, were profusely illustrated, often by drawings he
made after old models. It may seem rather odd that~ despite his obvious
interest in academic studies, he never for a moment entertained the
idea of entering the teaching profession. He explained this to me years
later by saying that, very early in his life, he became convinced of
the wisdom of the traditional Chinese practice of combining
intellectual pursuits with an 0fficial career. In China, he said, a
scholar taught students only when he failed to gain entrance into the
government service, which was true from Confucius and Mencius down to
the present time. It was for this reason that, as soon as he had
completed his formal education, he entered the Dutch Foreign Service
and before long was appointed Secretary of the Dutch Embassy in
Japan. He arrived in Tokyo in 1935, a young man of twenty-five, who
already had acquired a command of the Japanese language and a famil
iarity with Japanese history and culture. His first assignment to Japan
extended over seven years. He travelled all over Japan, and made
several extensive trips to nearby China, building up a library and
cultivating the friendship of Chinese and Japanese scholars. He must
have cut a strange figure in China and Japan, this tall and heavy-set
young man from Europe who took as his ideal life that of a
traditional Chinese man of letters, a public official who indulged
himself not only in the pursuit of poetry and the classics but also
enriched his life by music, chess-playing, calli-graphy and painting.
His Chinese and Japanese friends in those days spoke and wrote fondly
of him, collating literary endeavurs with him frequently and giving him
their own calligraphic works and paintings, all of which he cherished
with loving care throughout his life. Instead of undertaking analytical
studies of the classics as most Sinologues do, his first serious
project was to pursue an obscure subject, that of the Chinese lute (
ch'in), a zither-type stringed instrument which the Chinese have been
playing since remote antiquity. He studied the lute from all angles,
seeking references to it in the classics and literature, learning its
scores, playing the instrument under the guidance of a Chinese teacher,
and ending up by writing a large volume on it. The Lore of the
Chinese Lute: An Essay in Ch'in Ideology is an authoritative work which
has no parallel even in Oriental literature. It was published in 1941
by the Sophia University in Tokyo as a monograph of the series
Monumenta Nipponica, of which he was an editor from the beginning.
Besides the erudition of the work, one is particularly amazed by a
short and concise preface he wrote, which is in a Chinese literary
style so classical that few Chinese writers would attempt it in this
age. As far as written Chinese is concerned, he was a rank
conservative. He refused to write in vernacular Chinese (pai hurt)
which has become the vogue in modern China, and he even refra~ed from
punctuating his writings in the modern manner. It was only natural that
he opposed vigorously the "simplification" of the Chinese lan-guage
undertaken by the Chinese Communists. His interest in the lute led
him to explore how the instrument and its music found their way into
Japan. It appeared that a Chinese Buddhist monk by the name of Tung-
kao, who came to -Japan in 1677, could have been responsible for the
development of "the lore of the lute" in Japan. For many years, Dr. van
Gulik painstakingly traced the footsteps of this rather obscure Chinese
monk
all over Japan, collecting a 'vast amount of materials from temples and
old bookshops. In his notes, he recorded the ecstasy he experienced
when he accidentally came across in Kyoto a large scroll by Tung-kao.
It was his intention to write a biography and to edit and publish the
complete works of the monk. Unfortunately, the outbreak of the
Pacific War in 1941 forced him to leave Japan in a hurry. and some of
the materials he so assiduously collected, including the priceless
scroll, were lost. After Pearl HarbOr, Dr. van Gulik was trans-ferred
to Chungking, where he served as First Secretary of the Dutch Embassy
in China. Those were difficult days for him, as his country was overrun
by the Nazis and China was engaged in a desperate struggle with a
substantial portion under enemy occupation. But Dr. van Gulik was his
old self, going about town cultivating the friendship of Chinese men of
letters and artists. lie even gave several public recitals of the
lute to raise money for the common war effort
During these years, he also met Miss Shui Shih-fang (Frances Shui), a
university graduate from a good Chinese family. He quickly fell in love
with Miss Shui and they became engaged. He took his future bride around
to meet his Chinese friends who set up parties during which he
recited his most recent poetic compositions and played. the lute. Dr.
van Gulik and Miss Shui were married on December 18, 1943, in
Chungking, first in a Christian ceremony and later in a Chinese
ceremony, both of which were attended b y a large number of Chinese
writers and artists 4~ who showered the couple with their works as
wedding presents. The union was a very happy one, to which three sons
(Willem Robert, Pieter Anton and Thomas Mathijs) one daughter (
Pauline Francis) were born. With the assistance of his friends, The
Selected Works of Tung-kao, a slender volume containing what was
salvaged of the materials pertaining to the Chinese monk, was published
in Chungking. The bulk of the volume consists of poems Tung kao
composed to express his longings for the Ming Dynasty, which had, by
the time Tung-kao migrated to Japan, fallen under the Manchus. The most
rewarding reading, however, is Tung-kao's biography written by Dr.
van Gulik, again in classical Chinese. He was, however, unable to prove
conclusiveiY that it was indeed Tung-kao who first brought the
Chinese lute into Japan. There were Japanese writers who maintained
that the ancient instrument had found its way into Japan long before
Tung-kao set loot there. At the end of the second world war, by which
time Dr. van Gulik had stayed in China for almost four years, he was
recalled to The Hague- A year later, he was sent to Washington to serve
on the Far Eastern Commission, the eleven-nation body in charge of
formulating policies for the occupation of Japan. In 1948, when the
basic policies had been laid down. he was again assigned to Tokyo to
supervise their implementation. In war-devastated Tokyo, he re-
established the facilities to pursue his academic studies with his
accustomed vigour.
(to be continued)
THE AUTHOR: Dr. Chen Chih-Mai, who was Ambassador of the Republic of
China in Australia, and Ambassador to Japan.
