Mizushima began his career in 1958 when his debut work, Shinya no Kyaku, was awarded by a local manga magazine based in Osaka.

In 1981, he began publication of Hikari no Kojirō; an audacious work featuring an entirely original Japanese baseball league and commission.

Mizushima continued to author numerous works through the 1980s, most notably Niji wo Yobu Otoko (1987) and Ohayō K-jirō (1990).

[2] Mizushima marked his 50th anniversary as a manga artist in 2007, and Shōnen Champion placed Dokaben on its front cover along with messages and illustrations from many other manga artists such as Osamu Akimoto, Takao Saito, Mitsuru Adachi, Takehiko Inoue, Rumiko Takahashi, Fujiko Fujio, and Hiroshi Takahashi to celebrate Mizushima's achievements.

Other enthusiasts and baseball icons including Sadaharu Oh, Shigeo Nagashima, Takeshi Kitano, Hideki Matsui, and Kenji Jojima also contributed messages.

Because a single game can sometimes take months of serializations to complete, in certain scenes, Mizushima unknowingly changes the batting order and handedness of less important players.