The purpose of this paper is to conduct a literature review on the career of athletes with very high capabilities in their previous or future sports activities in international competitions. Additionally, we elucidate the trends of research on Japan’s athletes’ careers, and clarify future research issues. Papers were selected in accordance with the review procedure, and finally, 43 papers were deemed to fall under the scope of this review and were classified according to their research category.

Four categories were generated: “Competition Retirement”, “Support Systems”, “Employment”, and “Career Development”. We then focused on the shift in research interest in the careers of athletes in the “Career Development” category, and after describing the changes, clarified the research issues. The results, in examination of these changes, are summarized by the following three points.

1) With regard to research trends from 1996 to 2002, due to the decline of corporate sports, which has contributed to the improvement of Japan’s international competitiveness, the issue of athletes pursuing a second career started to attract more attention and began to be incorporated in research that belongs to the category of “Competition Retirement”.

2) Research trends from 2003 to 2010 fell under the categories of “Support Systems” and “Career Development” due to the background of career support systems established by the Japanese government, professional sports bodies, and universities as well as the increased interest in careers for youth players belonging to the J-League.

3) As for research trends after 2011, more papers were found which fell into the “Support Systems” and “Career Development” categories in which career support projects by the J-League and the Japanese Olympic Committee were repurposed to focus on athletes’ professional paths. These included founding start-up companies, and also considered re-education as well as the versatility of athletes’ skills. After 2016, studies in the category of “Career Development” have been actively carried out due to the growing momentum for dual career policies and the promotion of university sports in Japan.

This study examined the experiences in sports, lifestyle, previous and present history of injury and illness, physical and mental burden during sports activities, general health concerns, and request of professional support in 141 junior high school students who belonging extracurricular sports club in public junior high school using paper pencil questionnaire. As the result, high severe past injury proportion was observed in students who experienced zero, three or four kinds of sports event in their childhood. A short sleep duration was observed in test period, and this trend was remarkable in girl. A skipped breakfast was observed in 3.8% of boy and 7.4% of girl, and their sleep duration tended to be shorter than the average value of all participants. The awareness in sleep of both gender, and that in physical condition of girl were higher than that in nutrition. In addition, a lot of participants seek for the professional support of training in muscular strength, sports specific technique, and physical fitness. These results suggested that understanding individual history of past sports experiences, life style such as sleep duration and skipped breakfast, and awareness in general health is crucial for managing safety and health management in junior athletes.

(1) Background: This study aims to examine the association between service quality for sports and active aging and the impacts on different age cohorts; (2) Methods: This cross-sectional study used a convenience sample of 545 Japanese community sports club (CSC) members over 60 years old, recruited from across eight CSCs in Japan between 2012-2013. A self-administered questionnaire was used to measure the self-reported health status of the elderly, evaluations to CSCs, demographic characteristics, and information on sports programs; (3) Results: The results of multiple logistic regression showed that domains of general evaluation for sports (OR = 1.942 and 95% CI 1.336~2.824), benefits of sports (OR = 1.659 and 95% CI 1.344~2.047), and management in sports (OR = 1.273 and 95% CI 1.011~1.603) were important for club members aged 60-64, the young-old, and the old-old, respectively. With a reduced model for elderly members, stratified analyses showed a significant impact of service quality for sports on active aged people in the benefits and management domains, regardless of sociodemographic information or club participation behavior; (4) Conclusions: The findings suggest that the services encountered in sports are key to promoting health in a community. Service quality in age segmentation should be considered to promote and manage active aging in the future.

We conducted a survey of “community sport clubs” established to revitalize the local community and provide New Public, along with the managers of those clubs, focusing on 4 angles: 1) club managers’ actual performance of their duties; 2) factors determining the performance of those duties; 3) factors fostering club managers’ awareness and learning; and 4) the relationship between club managers’ performance and the process of club development. Our objective was to create a model to explain the relationship between the process of development of community sport clubs and the performance of club managers in order to clarify the structure of this relationship. This was an attempt to obtain insight into improving the quality of community sport clubs and fostering club managers.<br>
The results indicated that managers of community sport clubs engaged in various managerial duties that changed daily as they sought to contribute to their club’s development. The initial stages were found to be unpredictable, and club managers appeared to experience qualitative changes in their duties, ranging from sundry tasks to organizational administration and external coordination. Managers also tried to enhance their capabilities for handling these various duties in these changing circumstances. The model that was subsequently created demonstrated an interdependent relationship between the club developmental process and changing managerial duties, and also between these duties and enhancement of managerial capability.

The present study had 3 objectives. First, we aimed to categorize the effectiveness of participation in school athletic clubs in accordance with findings from preceding studies (study 1). Second, studies on the effectiveness of athletic club activities were to be organized by generation with the changes observed in each generation also described with a view towards clarifying research tasks (study 2). Third, we aimed to clarify the effectiveness of athletic club activities that had not yet been demonstrated in previous research (study 3). <br>
In study 1, when we categorized the effectiveness of athletic club activities, we confirmed the construct, the subscale, and the observable variable that determined effectiveness in each study. Each concept was grouped based on similarity and made types having higher degree. The categories we derived were "school adjustment"; "scholastic ability"; "character"; "stress and mental health"; "psychosocial development"; "physical growth and development"; "sport as a habit"; "attitude towards sports"; "fatigue"; "lifestyle"; and "others".<br>
In study 2, when we investigated the transition of studies on the effectiveness of athletic club activities, we focused on the problem establishment in these studies. This was considered while examining the association between each problem establishment and social background or policies of the day. As a result, at first, researchers continued selecting students who participated in athletic clubs as appropriate subjects for examining the effectiveness of physical exercise or sports activity. Second, researchers are also interested in the negative effectiveness of participation in athletic clubs. Positive trends are particularly strong for "school adjustment" and "stress and mental health" studies conducted after 1998. Third, studies that demonstrated significance or effectiveness of athletic club activities increased after 1983, and the effectiveness that were determined diversified since that time. Researchers found out various significance and effectiveness of athletic club activities, and recognition of the potential for athletic club activities to address issues also increased. It can be said that we researchers don’t reach a common understanding on the significance and effectiveness of athletic club activities.<br>
In study 3, we brought attention to the effectiveness of athletic club activities that had been overlooked in previous studies by comparing effectiveness as determined in empirical studies how it had been determined in theoretical studies. Unnoticed effectiveness of athletic club activities was the acquisition of abilities and attributes necessary for developing sports society and culture.

There are few studies on spectator sports that analyze people’s conversations or expressions from watching games. The aim of this study was to measure sports appreciation ability and to investigate the different types of programs that support spectators（henceforth, “participants” in the context of programs）. The types of programs that were assumed to exist are “the one-sided explanation-type program,” “the communication-type program,” and “the workshop-type program.” In this study, the workshop-type（WS）and the communication-type（COM）programs were investigated in the context of university ballet classes. These programs were different in regard to the degree of verbal expression of sports appreciation that participants shared during each program.

  As a result, about half of the participants in both groups had had a previous ballet experience. On the other hand, over 10% of the participants replied that they were still taking ballet lessons. More than 30% of the participants had never taken ballet classes.

  Sports appreciation ability was measured in two ways: by having the participants evaluate it themselves, and by having others evaluate it. In the analysis of own evaluation, it became clear that three sports appreciation abilities（the ability to formalize, the ability to be objective, and the ability to concentrate on information）, which seem important for expression, were higher in the COM program participants than the corresponding abilities in the WS program participants.

  The program involving a low degree of expression（the WS program）elicited lower expressions than the program involving a high degree of expression（the COM program）. It was suggested that expressions are related to sports appreciation ability.

  This investigation did not clearly reveal whether the WS program increased sports appreciation ability. However, the participants in the WS program had a significantly higher degree of satisfaction with the program.

This study had two goals. First, we aimed to identify the components of the outcomes that members of comprehensive community sport clubs achieve through club life in order to collect basic data to create a “quality-of-club-life indicator.” We created outcome items through recordings of interviews with club members. Second, we aimed to describe the process in detail to confirm the validity and reproduction of the outcome items.

  In designing the outcome items, we first examined the concept of “club life.” Next, we set seven hypothetical categories to classify the outcomes to be extracted. Subsequently, we collected data through interviews and questionnaire surveys of club members and selected the important items that had significant content related to “a rich club life” from the data. We then grouped items into categories with common meanings, referring to the hypothetical categories. In addition, in each hypothetical category, we grouped important items with common meanings into subcategories. Finally, to include all the outcomes that club members attained, we held a discussion to reorganize the subcategories. We also modified the hypothetical categories based on the composition of the subcategories that were reorganized. The categories of outcomes that were eventually derived were “connection”（9 subcategories）, “trust”（4 subcategories）, “rules”（3 subcategories）, “ikigai”（3 subcategories）, “sport participation”（12 subcategories）, and “learning”（3 subcategories）. The categories are the primary outcome items and the subcategories are their secondary outcome items.

The objectives of this study were to 1）clarify the product structure of visual sports media（a ballet DVD）used as a teaching material, and 2）, to schematically characterize the functions of this product based on previous studies. The following results were obtained:

  To analyze the product structure, the contents of a ballet DVD were categorized into items. These items were ranked according to their reliability, and those with low reliability were deleted. The remaining items were subjected to factor analysis. As a result, the following five factors were extracted: “moving factor,” “decoration factor,” “expression factor,” “background factor,” and “story factor.” Using the results of factor analysis, the product structure of the DVD was illustrated schematically as the relationship among these five factors. Furthermore, we attempted to present the product structure as the relationship among these factors and create an illustration that visually represents the structure. For this purpose, we applied the “Core-periphery theory” proposed by Udo（1993）and Chelladurai（1994）. The core of the product is the “advantage of seeing the movements in the DVD teaching materials,” that is, the characteristic of visual teaching materials. In other words, it is what cannot be understood without seeing, and is insufficiently taught using only paper materials. In this study, the moving factor and expression factor were considered to form the “core,” and the other factors were recognized as the “periphery.” This illustrated product structure is consistent with the aim of the dance class as a compulsory subject. The present results also confirmed that use of a video as a teaching material has some educational benefits.

The development of community sports clubs which produce innovation in the community sport environment is an important topic in our country. Formally, we have presented an organizing process model for community sports clubs dependant on the theory of social movements. This model tried to clarify an organizing process of community sports clubs as a movement, gradually influenced by constructive factors, psychological factors, and resource factors in community. However, a promotion factor that would influence the progress of each phase in this model could not be examined. The intentional promotion factor offered an interesting point of view in examining the roles of public administration for sport in organizing clubs. This study focused on the behaviors of staff members in local boards of education as an intentional promotion factor in such a process. The purposes of this study were to determine the dimensions of staff members' behavior in the organizing process of the organizing phase. The data were collected by mail questionnaires from 130 management members (except administrators) of 13 clubs that were established through the support of public administration. Management members were presented 39 items about the behaviors of a staff member in local boards of education and 5 items about club organization. The results were obtained by applying factor analysis and simple regression analysis. The main findings were; 1) In the organizing process of community sports clubs, the behavioral dimensions of staff members in local boards of education consisted of eight factors; coordination, getting support, setting discussion, activating discussion, accumulating credit, consideration, performance emphasis, and information. 2.) It was confirmed that many behavioral dimensions had a great influence on an aspect of personal issue perception into common issue perception, and an aspect of common issue perception into change intention, There might be systematic and reciprocal relationships among behaviors in these aspects. These results suggest differences in effectiveness of the behaviors in each organizing phase and the importance of "timely support" for club organization. In particular, behaviors according to the time of common issue perception was important.

Although there have been many studies of community sports clubs(CSC), little attention has been given to the organizing process of the CSC as a management body for community sport.The purposes of this study were to explain the organizing process of CSCs, based on a theory of social movements, and to consider how to promote community sport through the development of CSCs.The data were obtained from three CSCs, as typical examples, by reviewing previous reports and fieldwork.The main results are summarized as follows:1)The organizing process of a CSC could be explained by Katagiri's(1995)model which classifies the social movement process into seven phases.Applying this model, an organizing process model for a CSC was proposed.Furthermore a few obvious original characteristics of CSCs were highlighted.2)Taxonomy of the organizing process was constructed through a comparative analysis of the first type of organizing, termed "initiative of inhabitants", and the second type, termed"initiative of public administration".It consisted of five dimensions:degree of congnition for community issues, change agents of community sport environment, the meaning of organizing, resource mobilization, and types of decision-making.These findings suggest that supporting congnition of the sports environments is important for the development of a CSC.However, the present considerations are preliminary to further questioning based on better understanding of the development of a CSC.Further examination of the details of the proposed model is needed to build a support system for the development of CSCs.