Born on November 10, 1984, in Yaizu, a port city in the Shizuoka Prefecture of Japan, Kazuhisa Makita got a very late start in professional baseball. Though he was selected to the Collegiate National Team and played in a Japan-USA Collegiate Baseball Championship when he was enrolled at Heisei Kokusai University, he went undrafted when his collegiate career ended. After graduating, he played for the Nippon Express, an industrial league team. A few years later, in 2010, the Seibu Lions used their second pick during the 2010 draft to select Makita.
The investment that the Lions made in the right-hander quickly paid dividends, as Makita posted a 2.