Matsuzaka

Matsuzaka is the Yomiuri Shinbun human-resources officer who advocated for Jake Adelstein’s hiring and helped arrange his first newsroom exposure. He appears at two thresholds in Adelstein’s early career: first as the person who welcomes him into the company, then as the senior colleague who warns that becoming a reporter will require shedding his assumptions and much of his former life.

Identity and Role

Matsuzaka worked in human resources and was responsible for recruits. The memoir also identifies him as a Sophia University graduate, giving him a shared educational connection with Adelstein, who had studied there. The narrator’s portrait notes Matsuzaka’s appearance through an ethnic comparison, but his consequential role is institutional: he is both an advocate inside the hiring process and a guide to the demands of the profession.

Hiring and Early Support

When Adelstein was told he had been hired, Matsuzaka congratulated him, confirmed that formal materials would arrive by mail, and walked him out. He then disclosed that he, too, had graduated from Sophia University and had heard favorable reports about Adelstein from his teachers. Their school connection offered a personal explanation for Matsuzaka’s encouragement, while his lobbying on Adelstein’s behalf shows that he had also used his position to support the appointment.

Several months before Adelstein was due to start work, he returned to Matsuzaka’s office to request an early internship so that he could prepare. The unusual request initially took Matsuzaka by surprise: no recruit had previously asked to work before officially beginning. Rather than dismissing it, he gave Adelstein the materials provided to new reporters and arranged a roughly week-long mini-internship in several offices. Adelstein’s first posting was to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department press club. Matsuzaka’s response turned an anxious request for preparation into a practical introduction to the institution.

A Lesson in Unlearning

After Adelstein’s hiring ceremony, Matsuzaka took him for drinks at a Ginza shot bar. Adelstein, who did not yet drink alcohol, ordered a Coke and spoke eagerly about being assigned to an office and learning the trade. Matsuzaka interrupted that expectation with the principle captured by the book’s phrase It’s not about learning—it’s about unlearning.

His warning was concrete rather than ceremonial. A reporter, he said, would have to cut ties, surrender pride and free time, and abandon hobbies, preferences, and opinions. Adelstein should expect to act cordially toward people whose politics or ethics he disliked, defer to senior reporters, and assess sources by the value of their information rather than by personal judgment. Work would crowd out sleep, exercise, and reading; even assignments that seemed meaningless or foolish would have to be done. Matsuzaka thus presents journalism as a discipline of exposure and accommodation: professional competence depends not only on acquiring skills, but on revising the habits and certainties a recruit brings with him.

Narrative Significance

Matsuzaka’s two encounters with Adelstein frame the passage from recruitment to professional initiation. At the first, a shared university connection helps make the new employee feel welcomed; at the second, that welcome gives way to a demanding account of what the job will cost. His advice supplies an early measure against which Adelstein’s later experience as a reporter can be understood: entry into the newsroom is not simply the start of a career, but the beginning of a sustained process of unlearning.