Ippei Mizuhara

Honestly, Ippei is one of those people who fascinates me precisely because his job was supposed to make him invisible. An interpreter is meant to be a clean pane of glass, just moving someone else's words across two languages without leaving a fingerprint, and for years he did exactly that, standing inches from one of the biggest stars on the planet. Born in Hokkaido, raised between Japan and Southern California, he clearly had the language chops and the nerve to live in that in-between space, which is no small thing. So when it all unraveled, I felt this oddly personal pang, the kind you feel for someone who had real talent and a once-in-a-lifetime seat and somehow couldn't keep his footing. I just hope, genuinely, that he finds his way back.

Ippei Mizuhara is a Japanese interpreter born on December 31, 1984, in Tomakomai, Hokkaido. He attended Diamond Bar High School in California and built a career bridging Japanese and English at the highest levels of professional baseball. He became widely known internationally as the longtime personal interpreter for Shohei Ohtani, accompanying him throughout his Major League Baseball career.

Name (English)

Ippei Mizuhara

Name (Japanese)

水原一平

Reading

みずはら いっぺい

Born

December 31, 1984 (age 41)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Capricorn / Rat (子)

Origin

Tomakomai, Hokkaido, Japan

Height

186 cm

Occupation

Interpreter

High school

Diamond Bar High School

Motto

Private

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/ippei1231/
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E5%8E%9F%E4%B8%80%E5%B9%B3

Tags

• from Hokkaido
• interpreter

Last updated

2026-06-02

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.