9 experienced an urge to speak the French language that I loved, at the ‘flower paradise of Tokyo.’ In uttering French words, the professors guided me with an attitude of severity as they stood before my eyes, and one of them was Paul Rietsch, a priest who turned out into becoming my lifelong mentor. In the writings of author Inoue Hisashi who was my senior by a year, we have the works “Cleanup after Mockinpot Master” and “Mockinpot Master Again.” Here, the model for Master Mockinpot was Fr. Rietsch. “Fr. Mockinpot was an extremely unimpressive and rugged overseer and long-nosed Frenchman, and a very dirty person.” This is how he is described in “Cleanup after Mockinpot Master,” (1974, Kodansha). This sort of witty depiction was typical of Inoue. While he wasn’t as bad as that, he was indeed a little red-nosed. That unusually jovial and benign individual portrayed in the novel, having a vibrant style and refreshing manner of speech, subtle gestures and habits, and a room cluttered with a variety of articles, is indeed an apt description of Fr. Rietsch. He was a passionate man who took good care of his students, and a popular teacher to whom students would rush for consultation, the moment they received a red mark. The professor was perhaps around his mid-forties at that time. He was born in the Alsace region of France, and was a follower of General de Gaulle. He joined the Free French Forces in World War II as a chaplain and fought in North Africa, against the Nazi German army of General Rommel. At the close of the war he came to Japan as a Catholic priest and member of the Society of Jesus, a male religious order of the Catholic Church, to the Sophia School Corporation that runs Sophia University, and began to teach at the University. In the chronological record of his career, Inoue also writes that having spent most of the money he had earned and saved on drinks, he once came weeping to Professor Rietsch, the chairperson of the department. Since he writes that he was
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