Eiji Kawashima

Goalkeeping is the cruelest job in football. Make nine saves and concede once, and the once is what people remember. Eiji Kawashima, born in Saitama in 1983, built an entire career inside that arithmetic. He came through Omiya Ardija, Nagoya Grampus and Kawasaki Frontale before moving to Lierse in Belgium in 2010 — a genuinely unusual leap at a time when Japanese goalkeepers simply did not go to Europe, with no established path to follow. He stayed there for years. He also took plenty of criticism along the way, and the thing I keep coming back to is that he kept showing up for the next match anyway, which is a specific kind of toughness that has nothing to do with reflexes. He is famous too for the languages he picked up wherever he landed, a detail that says more about his curiosity than any highlight reel would. He is still playing, now with Jubilo Iwata in J2. Past forty and still standing in the goal — that alone settles the argument.

Name (English)

Eiji Kawashima

Name (Japanese)

川島永嗣

Reading

かわしま えいじ

Born

March 20, 1983 (age 43)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Pisces / Boar

Origin

Saitama, Saitama Prefecture, Japan

Height

185 cm

Occupation

association football player

• Official sitehttp://eiji-kawashima.com/
• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/eijikawashima01/
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eiji%20Kawashima
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B7%9D%E5%B3%B6%E6%B0%B8%E5%97%A3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q310610

Tags

• Saitama Prefecture
• association football player

Last updated

2026-08-07

Facts are limited to publicly available information up to 2024; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.