Judge Dee is the main character of what is likely the very first mystery story ever written.  The author left no name but wrote during the late Ming Dynasty (1700s).  His story was set in Tang Dynasty times, a thousand years earlier, when the actual Judge Dee lived, judged, traveled, investigated and tried to find justice on earth.

       Van Gulik, who translated our book, "The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee" had found the Ming story when he lived in China before World War II. Trying to popularize the genre of the Chinese detective story, Van Gulik also composed a number of other Judge Dee stories in the same vein as ours, which is the genuine article.

         What approach will we take with this odd story? Besides its own fascination, which we all will enjoy, the story presents historical, social, legal, philosophical, religious pictures of ancient China. Particularly, we will explore the relationships between Confucius' moral philosophy and the Judge Dee stories.

         For example, Confucianism is most prominently represented by Confucius' Analects. A central verse, or Analect, is:  "The teacher said, 'In order to increase the peace and harmony in society, appoint the honest and empathetic to office.'" (2:19). Similarly, the Judge Dee story lives this Confucian principle out, as evidenced by the original introduction: "If, therefore, a judge is honest, then the people in his districts will be at peace." (p.5).

       This will be our modus operandi, to begin with: to determine the extent to which the Judge Dee stories follow Confucianism by finding Confucian ideas, principles or morality that appear in the Judge Dee stories -- one Analect, one passage from Judge Dee, show the consistency between.

        Once we are familiar with this material and method, then we can compare East and West -- and see if the twain really do meet!

More on Confucianism --

         Confucius taught people to have respectful relationships that keep peace in  self, society and the universe. The highest duty for each is to do what is right. 
The Five Relationships:

          Confucius believed that if everyone would live up to his or her proper relationship-obligations, then the world and the universe could be improved toward perfection, thus reducing the need for rulers and government. The people would emulate that goodness and rightness in their own lives -- a sort of trickle-down theory of ethical behavior.

From the cases of Judge Dee (active ca. 700):

        It starts with two silk merchants who travel together for mutual safety. One of them, greedy, robs and murders the other, sells his stuff, then lives richly. When caught, he blamed it all on someone else.
       What is the relationship?  What should the relationship have been?
       What kind of world would we have if we could not trust our friends?
            Dee's judgment: The young man, after he is tortured into confessing, is executed and his head put on display. All of the stolen goods along with his goods are sold to support to murdered man's family.  -- Justice?

        We will see relationships between ruler and ruled, between friends, husband and wife, parents and sons/daughters, teachers and students. Some relationships will be right and the outcome is good, while some are corrupted and murderous, with no outcome but evil for everybody -- until those relationships are righted. This is Confucian morality in a nutshell. Look for these types of relationships and track how they are at a point in time, how they progress, what they become, how they change. It will tell us much about Chinese culture, and Confucianism is making a huge comeback in China today as Marxism withers away.

       All these relationships can be seen as extensions of the ultimate relationship in The Mandate of Heaven. Divinity gives a person the mandate to rule. As long as a ruler is good and conscientious, the heavens smile on him and the people are peaceful and happy. All is well.  When he begins to neglect or ignore his responsibilities to the people, the people are hurt and heaven withdraws the mandate. All is visible and obvious, often resulting in an overthrow (one way or another, of the ruler).  It is all a relationship-thing and must be relating properly. Or else!