Kazuya Fukuura

Kazuya Fukuura is the kind of player who never fits neatly into a highlight reel. Born in Narashino, Chiba, in 1975, he went to the local high school and then spent his professional career as a first baseman with the Chiba Lotte Marines — the same corner of Japan, start to finish. That sort of one-team, one-region loyalty has become rare almost everywhere in professional sport, and it gives his name a weight that statistics alone don't convey. The comparison people reached for was Mark Grace: a tall, unshowy contact hitter whose value revealed itself over seasons rather than in single swings. I find that comparison unusually apt, and unusually honest. Fukuura has since moved into coaching, which feels like the natural continuation of a career built on craft rather than spectacle. If you scan a database and skip past him because the highlight numbers aren't loud, you've missed the point of him entirely.

Name (English)

Kazuya Fukuura

Name (Japanese)

福浦和也

Reading

ふくうら かずや

Born

December 14, 1975 (age 50)

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Sagittarius / Rabbit

Origin

Narashino, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Height

183 cm

Occupation

baseball player / baseball coach

High school

Narashino Municipal Narashino High School

• Xhttps://x.com/fukuura_0709
• Wikipedia (English)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazuya%20Fukuura
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%A6%8F%E6%B5%A6%E5%92%8C%E4%B9%9F
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q486224

Tags

• Chiba Prefecture
• baseball player
• baseball coach

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.