History

Robert Hans van Gulik was born in 1910 at Zutphen, Netherlan​d to a Dutch army medical officer. He moved to current Jakarta where he learned Mandarin and a variety of other languages. He earned his Ph.D. from Leiden University in 1935 after only a year there. van Gulik was able to earn a position as a linguist in the Dutch Foreign Service. He was then stationed mainly ​

in East Asia. During World War II, he served as secretary of the Dutch mission for Chiang Kai-Shek’s government. While performing this duty, he married Shui Shifang, the daughter of a Qing Dynasty Imperial mandarin. After World War II ended, van Gulik became the council for the Dutch embassy before traveling to Tokyo, Japan where he published his first two books: Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee and a book of erotic pictures from the Dynasty. Robert van Gulik became linked with the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science in 1959-1965. He became the Dutch ambassador to Japan from 1965-1967 before he passed away from cancer.