[4] Handa was born in 1951, in Nishinomiya, Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan,[5] into a multi-generation sake-barrel manufacturing family.
[20] In 2006 he established the International Sports Promotion Society (ISPS)[21] and founded the University of Cambodia, later serving as the Chancellor[22] and as a professor.
[26] In 1994 he worked as a conductor at the Albert Hall, when he booked the building in order to produce a multi-genre dance and musical performance.
[27] His debut in opera came in March 1997 (see below), and in the same year, at the age of 46, he completed Musashino Academia Musicae Parnassos Eminence.
[35][36] In December 2003, he held a concert with the Australian and Chinese performers called Great Japanese, Chinese and Australian Singers' Joint Performance – An Evening of Classical Opera, featuring himself as the Japanese singer, at the Grand Palace of the People's Theater in Beijing.
[39] On May 30, 2004, he premiered of the opera Yang Guifei in Beijing, performing the role of Akao,[35] which received generally favorable reviews in the Chinese press.
reached number 1 on the Weekly Hit Enka Ballad/J-pop USEN Chart and ranked 28th in requests for the entire year of 2009.
[49] Handa funds charity concerts to raise awareness about human rights and poverty issues.
[50] In September, he performed together with Michael Bolton and Peter Cetera at the Toshu Fukami and His Friends from Around the World Concert Tour.
In November 2008, his second novel, Batta Ni Dakarete, was selected as a Japan Library Association Recommended Book.
[67] In 1999 he performed in the lead roles in the Noh play Fuji at the Hosho Nohgaku Theater, and on June 1 and 2 he held public Noh performances alongside the head of the Hoshu School at the United Nations Plaza and The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
[69] In 2000 Handa staged a takigi Noh at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts and Peking University, performing the lead role in Midare,[70] and held public performances of Hosho School Noh in China, at Peking University and at the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, where he performed the lead role in the Noh play Midare (乱).
[72][73][74] Later that year on September 19, he performed the lead role (White lion) in the Noh play Shakkyō at the China National Children's Theatre in Beijing.
[76] Then on September 27, he performed the lead role in Okina again, at the 5th Tokyo Dai Takigi Noh at Telecom Center.
[note 2][81] He has stated that because the blind golfers he witnessed playing in Australia were the most cheerful, pleasant, and happy people with a disability he had ever met, he began developing worldwide activities to promote blind golf as social contribution through golf in the private sector.
[83] As of March 2014, 18 organizations had joined the International Blind Golf Association,[84] with he serving as Honorary President.
[85] He has also been involved with working to spread disabled golf internationally, with the goal of it becoming an official sport in the Paralympics.
[2][86] Handa is the first Japanese person to serve as Vice President of The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
He also established the WSD HANDA Center for Human Rights and International Justice at Stanford University.
[104] Handa serves as a director at The Japan Forum on International Relations, a private policy think tank.
The scholarship enables 500 students with outstanding grades to enroll at the university tuition-free each year and obtain a bachelor's degree.
[110][111] He established the Chancellor's Honors Scholarship Fund in 2012 and has been providing full tuition fees to academically advanced students since then.
[114] In December 2008, he was bestowed with the Grand Cross of the Royal Order of Monisaraphon as the representative of the International Foundation for Arts and Culture.
[21] On 26 May 2022, Handa was appointed an Honorary Officer of the Order of Australia, for distinguished service to the arts, education and sport through philanthropic contributions.