The Dutch sinologist and diplomat Robert van Gulik came across a copy in a second-hand book store in Tokyo and translated the novel into English. He then used it as the basis to create his own original Judge Dee stories over the next 20 years. Van Gulik wrote:
- This translation is chiefly a product of the Pacific War years, 1941-1945, when constant travel on various war duties made other more complicated Sinological research impossible.
- This novel Dee Goong An is offered here in a complete translation. Possibly it would have had a wider appeal if it had been entirely re-written in a form more familiar to our readers.
The translation was first privately printed on behalf of Van Gulik by the Toppan Printing Company of Tokyo, in a limited run of 1200 numbered signed copies.[1]
The translation features nine drawings, three copies from old Chinese art, and six illustrations by the author.
"Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu's Reign"
As carefully noted in his scholarly postscript, the present book is in fact a translation of only about half (31 out of 65 chapters) of a Chinese book in Van Gulik's possession, entitled "Four Great Strange Cases of Empress Wu's Reign". Van Gulik obtained three editions of that book – a 19th-century manuscript and two printed editions, published respectively in 1903 and in 1947 at Shanghai. There were many differences between variant texts, Van Gulik considering the 19th century version the best and basing his translation mainly on it.
The part which Van Gulik translated describes Judge Dee simultaneously solving three difficult criminal cases, culminating with his being rewarded by promotion to the Imperial court (which, Van Gulik notes, was the traditional culmination of a Chinese story about an official). The later 34 chapters described events at the Court (where the historical Judge Dee is known to have been a valued adviser to Empress Wu, though his career suffered various ups and downs).
Based on textual analysis, Van Gulik became convinced that the second part was a later addition written by "a person of feeble talents". As stated in the postscript, "Part I is written in a fairly compact style and cleverly composed. The style of part II, on the contrary, is prolix and repetitious, the plot is clumsy and the characters badly drawn. Further, while Part I is written with considerable restraint, in part II there occur passages which are plain pornography, e.g. where the relations of the Empress Wu with the priest Huai-i are described".[2] Moreover, Part II did not describe a detective investigation at all, but rather dealt mainly with court intrigues and power struggles - and thus did not serve Van Gulik's aim of presenting Chinese crime fiction to Western readers.
For all these reasons Van Gulik decided to translate the first part only. The title given, "Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee", is what Van Gulik assumed the original work was called, before the second part was added. However, he never actually obtained a copy of that original work or a conclusive evidence that it had existed under that name. The second part, of which Van Gulik so strongly disapproved, was apparently never translated - leaving western readers with no way of independently evaluating Van Gulik's scathing criticism.
