Mr. Masumi Muramatsu
As an enterprising teenager, four years after World War II Mr. Muramatsu became a "clerk-typist" (now an extinct profession) for the Occupation Forces, and making the most of his opportunities, gradually acquired proficiency as an interpreter. By 1956 he was in the US working as a simultaneous interpreter, one of the original eight recruited by the US State Department, to help numerous industrial "productivity" study teams being invited from Japan to tour and learn from all sectors of the American industry, agriculture, and society. Those "teams" were likened at the time to the kentôshi, the large Japanese missions composed of diplomats, scholars, priests, craftsmen and artists, that went to Tang Dynasty China in the 7th and 8th centuries to expand their knowledge). In 1960-65 he was a researcher at the US-Japan Trade Council, Washington, D.C. (today's Japan Economic Institute of America).

In 1965 he returned to Japan to establish Simul International, Japan's first professional organisation "of interpreters, by interpreters, and for interpreters," with former interpreter colleagues. He served it as president and then chairman; he was also president of the Simul Academy of International Communication. In 1998, he retired from the management when Simul was merged into the Benesse Corporation group of companies, but remained as senior advisor until September 2000.

Now he says "I fancy myself as an author/lecturer/occasional teacher." Mr. Muramatsu has also written many books based on his wide and long experience (and expects five more to be published by the autumn)