Ryūhei Kawakami

Born in Naha, Okinawa in 1993, Ryūhei Kawakami is the kind of former ballplayer I find myself quietly rooting for without quite knowing why. There's something about being raised on an island with that particular combination of sun, salt air, and baseball diamonds that just feels like it builds a certain kind of character — grounded, tough in the quiet way rather than the loud way. At 181 cm he's got the frame, and hitting his early thirties means he's past the raw-energy phase and into something more interesting — that zone where experience starts to sharpen everything. He went to Yakult as a first-round pick, spent five years there, and now trains other people as a personal trainer — Okinawa athletes carry something real with them, and I'm genuinely here for it.

This take was written by generative AI, one per person, from publicly reported facts (editorial policy). It is a reading of the record, not reporting.

Ryūhei Kawakami is a Japanese former professional baseball player born on May 8, 1993, in Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Standing 181 cm tall, he is a Taurus by zodiac sign and belongs to the Rooster year in the Chinese zodiac. A first-round draft pick of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows in 2011 out of Kosei Gakuin High School, he played for Yakult from 2012 to 2016 and now works as a personal trainer.

Name (English)

Ryūhei Kawakami

Name (Japanese)

川上竜平

Reading

かわかみ りゅうへい

Born

May 8, 1993 (age 33)

Origin

Naha, Okinawa Prefecture, Japan

Height

181cm

Occupation

Baseball player

Zodiac / Chinese zodiac

Taurus / Rooster

• Instagramhttps://www.instagram.com/kawakami5858/
• Wikipedia (Japanese)https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B7%9D%E4%B8%8A%E7%AB%9C%E5%B9%B3
• Wikidatahttps://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q11477588

Tags

• From Okinawa Prefecture
• Baseball player

Last updated

October 18, 2026

Only publicly available facts are listed; non-public or unconfirmed items are omitted. Base data was compiled from Wikidata from June 2026 onward; ages are recalculated daily and deaths are checked against Wikidata on an ongoing basis. English text is machine-assisted (facts translated by Sonnet, "My Take" written by Opus 4.8). The Japanese page is the source of record.