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November 22, 2024
 

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Michael Hoffman

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Michael Hoffman
Michael Hoffman is a fiction and nonfiction writer who has lived in Hokkaido by the sea almost as long as he can remember. He has been contributing regularly to The Japan Times for 10 years. His latest novel is "The Naked Ear" (VBW/Blackcover Books, 2012).
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Mar 17, 2018
Till death do us unite: Japan's dark tales of love
Has ever a civilized people lived in greater intimacy with death than the Japanese?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 10, 2018
Confusing power with powerlessness
"We're all terrified. It's like living in a mass grave." It's an underground shelter. "No water, no food, no ventilation, no toilets. Explosion after explosion. It never stops."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 24, 2018
What's to become of humanity when AI replaces us all?
Humanity is turning a corner. The signpost is marked "AI." Everyone knows what it stands for. Who knows what it means?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Feb 17, 2018
Heroism and the changing state of morality
Every age breeds its own morality. One era's good is another's evil. Today's virtue is tomorrow's vice, today's wisdom tomorrow's stupidity, today's sanity tomorrow's madness.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 10, 2018
Japan's impoverished are finding it hard to enjoy freedom
Freedom comes in many forms, as does "unfreedom." You can be a prisoner in prison, a prisoner in a prison-state, a prisoner in your job, a prisoner in your joblessness. Who is freer — a poor person in a free country, or a rich person in an "unfree" country?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 27, 2018
North Koreans express cynicism and enthusiasm over nuclear crisis
The fate of the world hangs on two volatile characters of doubtful sanity.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jan 20, 2018
On the adulteration of Japan's oldest religion
Primitive Shinto is one of the loveliest religions in the world. It's beautiful in its simplicity — defenseless too, as it proved, against the nativists and nationalists who warped it into 18th-, 19th- and 20th-century xenophobia.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 13, 2018
In a nation that favors so much, why are Japanese teens so glum?
The world's happiest teens live — no, not in Japan — in the Dominican Republic. It's a beautiful Caribbean country, much and justly beloved by tourists yet plagued by poverty, crime, child marriage, teen pregnancy and inadequate education. Tourists needn't worry about that, but local kids, you'd...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 30, 2017
Who can we trust during these new wars of the world?
Swords into ploughshares. Spears into pruning hooks. Three thousand-odd years ago, when civilization was rough and passions raw, an extraordinary visionary saw peace dawning. His words, recorded in the Biblical book of Isaiah, transcend religious denomination and national affiliation. They belong to...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 23, 2017
Men still making houses as women try to leave home
Dogen Ogata's name is known worldwide before he knows it himself. He's 8 months old. One day last month, in all innocence, cradled in his mother's arms, he attended a session of the Kumamoto municipal assembly.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Dec 16, 2017
Japan's historical resistance to Christianity
Jesus and Japan go back a long way, longer than you'd think if you don't happen to know of a peculiar legend that has the Son of God sojourning — twice: once before, once after the crucifixion — in a remote mountain village in northern Aomori Prefecture.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 9, 2017
Shut in by the past yet still unable to face the future
Mom, dad, two kids, nice house, nice suburb, good income — you just know this story is about to go smash.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 25, 2017
The popularity of the psychopath is a mind puzzle
Psychopaths, says neuroscientist Nobuko Nakano in her 2016 bestseller "Saikopasu" ("Psychopaths"), tend to share two personality traits. Freedom from fear and anxiety is one. Indifference to other people's feelings is another.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Nov 18, 2017
Japan's shifting attitudes toward prostitution
Sex is a necessity and a pleasure; it's also a problem. It exalts some, degrades others. It generates offspring. It's dynamite. Taboos concerning it are as old as humanity. Laws regulating it predate civilization. Nowhere is the human libido absolutely unfettered. Incest is nowhere tolerated, marriage...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 11, 2017
On the quest for the holy grail for as long as we live
Is death inevitable? True, everyone born before Aug. 4, 1900, has proved mortal (the world's oldest-known living person, a Japanese woman named Nabi Tajima, was born on that date). But the past is only an imperfect guide to the future, as the effervescent present is ceaselessly teaching us.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 28, 2017
Limit the damage on office battlefields
What a nest of vipers an office is! Tens, hundreds, thousands of people, supposedly united in a common enterprise — yet if looks could kill, how many would make it alive through the day?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 14, 2017
Success is elusive on the wrong side of the wealth gap
When the political thinker Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-59) visited the infant United States in 1831, he was struck above all by the "equality of condition" that prevailed there.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 14, 2017
Japan's 'way of the sword' baffles foreign observers
All cultures present aspects that cannot but baffle the foreign observer. For example: nothing in the native tradition equips a Japanese to grasp the concept of the blood of the crucified son of the one God washing believers clean of sin.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 23, 2017
Prepare for the future, at your convenience
Japan's first convenience store was not, as many suppose, 7-Eleven in Tokyo in 1974 but Mitsui in Kyoto in 1673.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 16, 2017
The prosaic state of ancient Confucianism
"Confucianism," says historian Hiroshi Watanabe, "is perhaps the most powerful political ideology yet conceived by the human race."
Two of America’s biggest debt holders are dumping Treasurys
The U.S. Treasury building in Washington. Investors in Japan and China sold a pile of U.S. debt in the last quarter, just before the U.S. presidential election.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
Japan, U.K. and Italy discuss inviting more countries to joint fighter project
A new concept model of a next-generation fighter jet to be jointly developed by Japan, Britain and Italy is on display in Farnborough, Hampshire, in July.
Haruki Murakami's 'The City and Its Uncertain Walls' gives deep deja vu
For “The City and Its Uncertain Walls,” translated into English by Philip Gabriel, Haruki Murakami confronts the ghosts who won't leave him alone.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

Podcast

One of the many entrances to the Kabukicho neighborhood in Tokyo’s Shinjuku Ward.
Kabukicho: Tokyo’s ‘stadium of desire’

Longform

Construction takes place on the Takanawa Gateway Convention Center in Tokyo, slated to open in 2025.
A boom for business tourism in Japan?
By Kathryn Wortley

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