It’s not always easy to talk about all the profiles you’d like to mention when it comes down to the J.League. You’d like to cover players who don’t always get the spotlight, but they would deserve a shoutout for what they did in these years. And that’s why J. Legends was born as a column – there are men who spent their career devoted to places or realities that don’t always get a proper narration, and today’s protagonist is a good example of that.
Episode 5 digs deep into the J.League-sphere. If you’ve been following just the top-flight or the main teams, it’s hard to imagine you’d ever heard the name of today’s protagonist. And yet, he’s been more influential that you could imagine. He featured in places mostly outside of the main ones, and his journey started with a doubt, when he was still a teenager: “I said I was aiming to become a J.League player, but I didn’t know what level that was”.
And that doubt probably still befuddles Kazushi Mitsuhira a bit. In the end, the striker played just 44 matches in the top-flight, with eight goals. The biggest slice of his life has been lived in the second tier, fighting with tooth and nails to elevate his teams. And we could say he kinda made it: a J3 champion, two promotions to J1, a top-scoring title and the chance to lift the Emperor’s Cup, even scoring in the final. We’re talking of a unique guy.
When they announced his renewal with Ventforet Kofu in December 2025, this was his comment: “When the off-season comes around, I get an irresistible urge to drink coffee in a place with clean air. Thinking about that, I drove to a cafe in Kobuchizawa. While drinking a blended coffee, I reflected on myself this season. Did I give it my all? This coffee is delicious. Do I still have a strong desire to grow? It’s refreshing. Can I proudly tell the people who are supporting me that I gave it my all? If I keep thinking about things like that, the coffee will be gone. Next year, I want to have a season where I can think only about the taste of coffee during the off-season.”
Striking Dreams
It’s incredible how you can’t find any major football news over Mitsuhira until high school. That’s because he was relatively unknown until then, playing for the small Hadano Minamigaoka High School. But when two selections from Kanto University squared off, Mitsuhira impressed back-then head coach at Kanagawa University, where he enrolled in 2007. 29 goals later, he made a decent mark, and some professional teams started observing him.
He had a training with FC Tokyo, but eventually he decided to join Shonan Bellmare, where he already played four matches in the second division in 2008 (even scoring once!). It was a special moment, because Hadano City – the hometown of Mitsuhira – is part of the towns associated with Bellmare. Mitsuhira ended up having some pitch time, even scoring in the top-flight and featuring with players like Wataru Endo, Naoki Ishihara, Ryota Tsuzuki, and Ryota Nagaki.
After four goals in 21 matches in all competitions, Mitsuhira left Bellmare to not come back at all. He was just 22, but his journey was about to start. And it was going to be a perilous route, where numbers won’t always match the efforts that he put on the pitch. Despite being a forward, he had just three seasons with 10 or more goals in the league he was playing in – and one of those times was in the only experience he ever made in the J3 League.
Furthermore, Mitsuhira’s days as a striker could have been counted at the beginning of his career. In his early trajectory, back-then head coach at Oita Trinita, Kazuaki Tasaka, transformed the forward into a right wing-back. And even if Mitsuhira meticulously applied to fit the bill, he could have been left in that position. Instead, his career turned into one where he scored more than 100 goals in seven different competitions.
They Called Him “Trinita”
Oita Trinita were the key-team of Mitsuhira’s career. He sticked with them in three different divisions, featured for the club in eight seasons, and played 219 games with 58 goals (which makes him respectively seventh and second all-time for matches and goals with the club). Besides “Mr. Trinita” himself (Daiki Takamatsu), Mitsuhira has been one of the most influential figures in Oita’s trajectory as a club.
And to think that initially he was there just on loan from Bellmare. He had a decent 2011, but then he prolonged his loan by stating: “I have unfinished business, I have to stay”. He conquered a first J1 promotion, but he didn’t stick around to enjoy it: he returned to Bellmare and was sold permanently to Kyoto Sanga, where he stayed two seasons. Nonetheless, the call from Trinita came again, and he came back in 2015.
Even when the club became incredibly the first one to ever have featured in J1 and then being relegated to J3, Mitsuhira stayed. He fought through an injury to deliver 10 goals in just 15 games, including a brace in the day of promotion. Despite Oita got their hands on very good forwards – their pair upfront for another promotion was Yusuke Goto and Noriaki Fujimoto –, the no. 27 found a way to make himself useful, scoring 10 more in the year of another promotion to J1.
Mitsuhira never matched those numbers in J1. Even when Fujimoto left to join Vissel Kobe mid-2019, the forward racked up just seven goals in 35 matches. He probably knew it wasn’t his level, and that’s why he left for Ventforet Kofu, where he’s been playing since 2022. Nonetheless, Oita’s memories are still vivid for Mitsuhira: he arranged fish trips with teammates, and in general he’s been defined as a cheerful personality to be around. That character found a way anyway to write history in Kofu.
One of a Kind
At his first year, Mitsuhira won the 2022 Emperor’s Cup, scoring in the final against Sanfrecce Hiroshima and winning the top-scoring title. And when he celebrated with the trophy and his afro, he was pretty honest: “That’s just the kind of person I am. I’m happy about the championship, but I’m even happier if I was able to get some laughs”. He then scored as well in the 2023-24 AFC Champions League, a sentence that I thought I would have never written in my life.
And speaking of personality, Mitsuhira has tons of it. His comedy skits on the pitch and outside of it are constantly up for grabs. He gained some media popularity despite never featuring in the Japanese national team and barely playing J1 football. He’s got a trademark celebration, he got another one because of his afro in Kofu, and there are colleagues of his age and comparable career who got way less coverage out of it.
Mitsuhira will turn 39 in January, and he’s still playing being among the vice-captains for this season – although we’ll have to verify how much minutes he’ll have with Ventforet this season. The striker is already in the Top 10 for goals scored all-time in the history of second tier (81, with ninth place shy of one single goal), and he’s very well in the run to enter as well the one for games played in the J2 League (featured already 380 times, tenth place is just 20 games away).
In the end, no matter how much we’ll see of Mitsuhira this season, because he’s kinda already written his name in the history books. And again, in a comment left on Kofu’s website about the upcoming season, he made a comparison: “When I came back from a trip the other day, the watermelon my son was growing had grown so big. Watermelons absorb rain on their own and overcome the heat of the sun to grow big. Just like that tough watermelon, I want to overcome hurdles in the upcoming year”.
