The purpose of this study was to review the activities of the Japanese men’s handball team in preparation for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games from the perspective of the players, to examine the management of the Japanese national team, clarifying the issues of the Japanese national team.

Looking at the results of the questionnaire, it became clear that many of the athletes favorably viewed many of the initiatives that they had implemented for the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, such as the increase in the number of international matches and training camps in foreign countries. Using the KJ method to analyze the semi-structured interview survey, it was found that during their efforts for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the Japanese national team failed to provide sufficient support to players with little international experience or who could not communicate well with foreign coaches.

To enhance the competitiveness of Japanese men’s handball, it is essential to develop professional teams as well as teams at the same level (adult teams and university teams). As the professionalization in Japan will advance in the future, a mechanism for players to continue their daily activities while being autonomous is required for each team and player.

The Japanese national team should contribute to the development of the handball world by actively disseminating intellectual information such as technical, tactical, and strategic theories of powerful countries including Europe. In addition, the Japanese national team and each team belonging to the new league should work to improve international competitiveness with a common sense of “the development of handball in Japan.”

Compared to the past 20 years, the number of teams participating in the World Men’s Handball Championship has increased and the number of games has increased. The top players in the world play a considerable number of games for their clubs. Therefore, it has become almost impossible to play a single match with only certain fixed members or to play many matches throughout the tournament from the viewpoints of players’ physical strength and injury prevention. In addition, the rules of handball games do not restrict the replacement of players, and the players can be replaced freely at any time and by any number of players during the game. This is a characteristic of handball. From the above point of view, substitution of players is an important factor. There is a measure of inequality called Gini coefficient used in economics and sociology. It is mainly used to measure inequality in income and wealth distribution. In this study, the Gini coefficient is modified to correspond to handball, and the purpose of this study is to propose an index using the Gini coefficient to quantify the imbalance in the playing time of bench players of a team in a single game. The handball version of Gini coefficient was calculated for 497 games (6 tournaments) of the Men’s Handball World Championship from 2013 to 2023 to identify the disproportionality of playing time of players on the bench.

The results suggest that the value of Gini coefficient was smaller in the World Men’s Handball Championships after 2019 than in the earlier tournaments, and that the imbalance of playing time of the players on the bench was smaller. In addition, the larger the difference in the ability of the opponents, the lower the value of the Gini coefficient devised in this study.

The Gini coefficient for handball, which was developed in this study, is an index that reveals the imbalance of playing time of players on the bench, and this index can be used to understand the characteristics of playing time of players on each team, to fix players on the court from among the bench players in the handball team, and to objectively determine the degree of sharing of playing time. This index enables us to understand the characteristics of the playing time of players on each team and to objectively determine the degree of fixation of players on the court and the degree of sharing of playing time among the bench players in a handball team.

The purpose of this study was to clarify the relationship between the timing of wing shot action and the phase of the goalkeeping action in world-level women handball, and to obtain knowledge useful for improving the saving shots rate of the Japanese women’s national team. The study uses notational analysis of game performance on three goalkeepers. As a result, the following were suggested as perspectives for coaches’ goalkeeping instruction. The coach should observe whether the goalkeeper starts the saving action before the start of the forward swing of the wing shooter. However, it must be understood that there are other factors that contribute to the success or failure of saving shots.

The purpose of this study was to reveal the actual situation of dribble play in the set attack in world-class women’s handball and to identify effective dribble play by analyzing the relationship between dribble play and attack performance. From 8 women’s finals tournament games of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 861 scenes of dribble play in set attacks at numerically equal situations were extracted, and notational game performance analysis was conducted.

The main results were as follows:

1) Dribble play that moves a large area tended to result in assist passes. Moreover, dribble play in stage 1 was ineffective, while it resulted in a high percentage of shots, assist passes, and 7m throws in stage 2.

2) Dribble play used in combination with a pivot resulted in a high percentage of shots, assist passes, and turnovers. Moreover, its effectiveness was 4.29 times higher than that of dribble play in parallel, cross, and individual play. Furthermore, over 80% of dribble play in parallel and cross combination plays led to passes.

3) Dribble play in individual plays resulted in a high percentage of shots, 7m throws, and free throws.

These results suggest that, in world-class women’s handball, dribble plays are effective when moving over a large area or creating mismatches with defenders, and dribbling plays in combination with pivots are effective, but require advanced technical and tactical skills to realize, furthermore, while dribbling in individual plays is effective, but it may not lead to a continuation of the attack.

The purpose of this study was to identify the target values that classify winning and losing in close games at the men’s elite level using decision tree analysis. The analysis was composed of 52 game performance based on official records of 243 closed games (score differences:1-7 goals) in 5 men’s world championships. First, correlation analysis was used to investigate the correlation between the final goal difference and game performance, and 32 game performance were found to be significant. Next, game performance showed a significant correlation, target values were identified using decision tree analysis. The results revealed the following:

1. In offense, achieving an attack success rate of 55.9% or higher results in an 89.5% probability of victory. To achieve this, increasing assists, utilizing more group tactics to attain a shot success rate of 61.0% or higher, is more important than reducing technical fouls.

2. For shots from areas, a wing shot success rate of 51.9% can be considered an achievable target value.

3. In defense, a save rate of 32.1% or higher, 13.5 or more saves, and 42.5 or fewer opponent shots can be considered achievable target values.

Netherlands Men’s Handball Development Project was initiated in 2006, and is elucidated in the present study through interviewing Mr. Henny Nijboer, a key resource person for the project. Result revealed the presence of three pillars: 1) the BENE-League Handball and License system for the participating club teams, 2) the Topsport Platform, and (3) the Handball Academy within the Netherlands Men’s Handball Development Project. With the advancement of the Netherlands Men’s Handball Development Project, an International League (BENE-League Handball, pillar 1) was established by an initiative of the top clubs. This prompted an increase in the number of international matches resulting in an improvement in the international competitiveness. Creation of the Topsport platform (pillar 2) encouraged development of the long-term technical plan for each club. Establishment of the Handball Academy (pillar 3) for provided a place that helped develop and improve player’s individual skills.

This paper introduces a web-based game analysis application designed to record various metrics such as the shooter’s movement trajectory, role, shooting course, scoring rate, and success rate. The primary aim of this application is to capture the shooter’s path leading up to a shot and the outcome of that shot, thereby facilitating a comprehensive understanding of the offensive strategies employed by the analyzed team and players. The application displays analytical results, including area-specific and course-specific shooting success rates, as well as shooting trajectories. Usability was assessed using the System Usability Scale (SUS), and the application scored higher than the average, confirming its user-friendliness.

The purpose of this study was to show the visual search behavior and strategies of expert handball goal referee when they were able to make correct decisions instantly. The subjects were A level expert referee certified by handball association and D level novice referee. The subjects were asked to judge 8 situations on 2-on-2 (Left Wing and Left Back) by wearing an eye-movement registration system to acquire their viewing point for the detection of visual search behaviors. The expert referee showed few fixations and long fixation duration under the important situations to make a judgment. The results indicated the expert referee possessed the changeable visual perception skills for receiving visual information under the critical situations.

In this study, I examined the setting of target values for judgments. I clarified the problems with the rules of the game and further demonstrated that the number of judgments follows a Poisson distribution, proposing target values for judgments. I examined how the target values for judgments change. I believe that if target values for judgments can be set based on the average value of judgments, it will contribute to raising the overall level of referees.

The number of infringement judgments was set at 1 to 50 and the number of foul judgments at 1 to 30. In the cumulative Poisson distribution, there was a significant difference at the 5% level and these were set as the target values for judgments.

I created a target value setting sheet so that target values for judgments could be determined from the estimated average values of the number of infringement judgments and the number of foul judgments.