Cambridge was born in Jamaica to a Japanese mother and a Jamaican father. His given name Asuka generally signifies "flying bird" in Japanese language and has also been a city name and period name in Ancient Japan (see
Asuka period). When he was 2 years old, his family moved from Jamaica to
Osaka, Japan. He played football until the age of twelve. When he was fourteen, he moved to Tokyo from Osaka. Cambridge then focused on athletics, running sprinting events for his high school in
Tokyo and later at
Nihon University, where he studied literature and science. He was fourth in the 100 m at the 2011
National Sports Festival of Japan. At the
2012 World Junior Championships in Athletics he narrowly missed out on the 200 m final, but he excelled in the relay alongside
Kazuma Oseto,
Akiyuki Hashimoto and Kazuki Kanamori – the team ran an
Asian junior record of 39.01 seconds in the heats (the fastest of all the qualifiers) and were just one hundredth slower in the final, where they claimed the
bronze medals. In 2013, Cambridge improved his personal best to 10.33 seconds for the 100 m and 20.62 seconds for the 200 m. On 25 June 2016, Cambridge won the 100 m final at the
Japan Championships in 10.16 to qualify for the
Rio Olympics. On 19 August 2016, Cambridge won a silver medal in the
4 × 100 m relay for
Japan at the
2016 Summer Olympics by setting a new Asian record of 37.60 seconds with teammates
Ryōta Yamagata,
Yoshihide Kiryū, and
Shōta Iizuka. On 29 August 2020, Cambridge won the 100m final with a new personal best of 10.03 at the Athlete Night Games in Fukui. ==Japan's top 10 records for men's 100m==