Chemical state analysis of adhesive interfaces is important to understand an adhesion mechanism between two different materials. Although photoelectron spectroscopy (PES) is an ideal tool for such an analysis, the adhesive interfaces must be exposed to the surface because PES is essentially a surface sensitive technique. However, an in situ observation is possible by hard X-ray PES (HA)(PES) owing to its large probing depth. In the present study, HAXPES is applied to investigate the adhesive interface between rubber and brass without exposing the interface. It is demonstrated that copper sulfides formed at the buried rubber/brass interface are distinguished from S-containing species in the rubber overlayer. The chemical state of the buried interface is compared with that of the "exposed" interface prepared by so-called a filter-paper method. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.