Shonan Bellmare

Hiratsuka sits on the Shonan coast, an hour south-west of Tokyo, and the football club that carries its name arrived there by a roundabout route. The team began in 1968 in Nasu, in Tochigi Prefecture, as the works side of a property firm, Towa Real Estate. Fujita Industries took it over in 1975, moved the head office to Tokyo and kept the training ground in Hiratsuka — the club was based in one place and played out of another for the better part of two decades.

Under the Fujita name it won the JSL Division 1 title three times, in 1977, 1979 and 1980, taking the Emperor's Cup in each of those same years.

Hiratsuka only became the official hometown in 1993, when the club joined the J.League as a founding member and renamed itself Bellmare Hiratsuka. The word is built from the Italian bello and mare — beautiful sea. By 2000 the name had widened again, to Shonan Bellmare, so that it covered the stretch of coast rather than the single town.

The mid-1990s were the club's strongest run in its new form: the Emperor's Cup in 1995, a defeat in the J.League Division 1 final to Yokohama Marinos the same year, then the Asian Cup Winners' Cup in 1996.

Since then the club has spent long stretches climbing back. It won the J2 League in 2014 and went up. In 2018 it beat Yokohama F. Marinos in the final of the J.League Cup.

Home is the Lemon Gas Stadium Hiratsuka, which holds 15,380.