Mitsuo Kodama was born in 1971 in Iwakuni, Japan. He studied bassoon at Kunitachi College of Music in Tokyo with Yoshihide Kiryu, the Hochschule für Musik und darstellende Kunst in Vienna with Milan Turković and Stepan Turnovsky, and the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva with Daniele Damiano.
He won second prize at the Japan Wind and Percussion Competition in 1998. He has worked with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien and the Phiharmonisches Orchester Heidelberg, and is currently a member of the Südwestdeutsche Philharmonie Konstanz.