He is a pitcher for the Nippon Professional Baseball league team Orix Buffaloes.

All season long he was competing with Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters superstar Yu Darvish for the Eiji Sawamura Award, the award for best pitcher in all of Japan.

The two ended up facing each other in the 2007 Pacific League Championship Series' deciding Game 5.

Since that season, he has remained solid, and was selected to the 2008 Japanese National Olympic baseball team, where he was one of the best players of what turned out to be a disappointing tournament for Team Japan, as the heavily favored Japanese failed to medal.

Naruse gave up no earned runs over 12 innings, outperforming his more famous counterpart Darvish.