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November 24, 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 / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 9, 2017
It takes threats from the unstable for us to question security
Adolf Hitler is like that bad tooth you can't keep your tongue off, though it hurts to touch it. Seventy-two years postwar, he keeps surfacing. He fascinates. All the way up and all the way down the age scale — from Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso, 76, who last week praised Hitler's "motives," to the...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 26, 2017
Definition of happiness in Japan remains a mystery
Try defining "happiness." "A state of well-being and contentment," says Merriam-Webster's dictionary, unhelpfully. It's like saying happiness is happiness.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 19, 2017
Wabi lies at the heart of Japanese history
You could spend your entire life in modern Japan without ever hearing the term wabi, though no overview of Japanese history or art is complete without it. It's a beautiful word, hard to define like most beautiful words. Poverty is the heart of it, which sounds dispiriting, but there's the Zen phrase...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 12, 2017
The role of rules in a 'moral education'
Human beings are born amoral. Infants know no rules, and obey none. They learn a few at home, then go to school and learn more. Everyone agrees rules are necessary. On what the rules should be there is less agreement; less still on the degree of obedience rules call for. There are times and places where...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 29, 2017
Death: We all have to go sometime
"In Japan today, talking about death is taboo," Kobe University medical professor Yoshiyuki Kizawa told the Asahi Shimbun earlier this month.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 15, 2017
Who is keeping an eye on Japan's surveillance power?
Utopias and dystopias have this in common: surveillance. From Thomas More's "Utopia" (1516) to George Orwell's "1984" (1949), from Plato's "Republic" (c. 380 B.C.) to Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" (1921), the view prevails that people behave better under scrutiny. Why conceal good deeds? For no reason. Therefore...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 15, 2017
Harsh lessons learned from Zen meditation
The monk Dogen lived in dreadful times. A revolution culminating in 1185 had brought to power warriors who for centuries had served perhaps the most unwar-like aristocracy in world history, the effete but highly cultured ladies and gentlemen of the Heian Period (794-1185). Their day was done. They were...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 1, 2017
Keep your eyes and ears open, and hands inside your pockets
It's a fake world. Alternatively: All the world's a stage.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 17, 2017
Living through the golden years has lost its sheen
A man in his 80s suffering mild dementia (the story is courtesy of Shukan Gendai magazine) is cared for by his wife, also in her 80s. She's exhausted. Caregiving drains the prime of life, let alone the end of it.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 17, 2017
Tracing the decline of a beautiful Japan
Two irreconcilable views of patriotism were given their classic expressions by two Englishmen: Lord Byron, the poet (1788-1824), and Dr. Johnson, the lexicographer and jack-of-all-literary-trades (1709-84). Byron said, "He who loves not his country can love nothing." And Johnson: "Patriotism is the last...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 3, 2017
Is Japan slipping into prewar politics?
"The recent flurry of legislation, including a proposed anti-conspiracy amendment to the organized crime law, recalls prewar Japan," Kobe University criminal law scholar Hirofumi Uchida told the Asahi Shimbun in an interview in March.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 20, 2017
The miserable case of unhappiness surging in Japan
This is the happiest time in the history of the world, and Japan is among the happiest of countries.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 20, 2017
Hokkaido's ancient place in the modern world
"Even the birds do not fly to Ezo," went a popular 19th-century saying about Japan's northernmost island. "Ezo" means "land of barbarians." Settlement tamed it into "Hokkaido" — "north sea road." But it was a rough passage.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 6, 2017
Corporate zombies need 'rich brains'
Japan has lost something. That's a stark but uncontroversial statement. Few whose memory goes back a generation or more will disagree. Controversy arises when the talk turns to what was lost; when, how and why it was lost; whether the nation is the better or worse for having lost it; and, if the former,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 22, 2017
Could Japan become a future cultural melting pot?
Why not welcome 10 million immigrants to Japan by 2050? That's Hidenori Sakanaka's pitch, but it's a hard sell.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 15, 2017
Tying the knot is unraveling in Japan
Love, marriage; marriage, love. It was so simple, once upon a time.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Apr 15, 2017
The Japanese ego: the difference of self
"Go, my son! Fight, make your way in the world." But — the proviso is implicit — tell no one who or what you are.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 8, 2017
Japan suffers from the grand illusion of prosperity
There are so many reasons to hate your job, if you're lucky enough to have one. The top four, according to Spa! magazine, are: stagnant salaries; a sense of being underappreciated and underevaluated; an overriding, unfocused anxiety; and a lost sense of purpose.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 25, 2017
Radiation brings fear, and kids let it all out
Children too young, one might think, to even know the word 'radiation' have picked it up and flung it with gleeful malice at disoriented new classmates who have enough to cope with already.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Mar 18, 2017
The evolution of the Japanese ego: the discovery of themselves
'There was no room for mercy in view of their crime." None asked, none given. "They met their end ... with ... a touching acquiescence in their fate."
U.S. aircraft carrier returns to Japan carrying navy’s ‘most capable fighter’
U.S. 7th Fleet Commander Vice Adm. Fred Kacher speaks to reporters shortly after the arrival of aircraft carrier USS George Washington at Yokosuka naval base in Kanagawa Prefecture on Friday.
Tokyo police care for lost umbrellas, keys and flying squirrels
An employee at the Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department Lost and Found Center in the Iidabashi area of central Tokyo bags, tags and organizes thousands of items.
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Japan approves ¥21.9 trillion stimulus plan
The policy chiefs of the Democratic Party for the People, Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito — Makoto Hamaguchi (left), Itsunori Onodera (center) and Mitsunari Okamoto — shake hands after reaching an agreement on an economic stimulus package on Wednesday.
Woman dies after train collides with car in Tochigi
A Moka Railway train car
Tokyo’s newest three-star chef wants ‘harmony across every detail’
British-born Daniel Calvert earned his third Michelin star last month — a stunning achievement considering his restaurant, Sezanne, has only been open for just over three years.
133-year-old Kyushu railway station remains to be partially preserved
The remains of the original Moji Station in Kitakyushu
After Shohei Ohtani bump, Iwate ironware maker sees brighter future
Kaito Kikuchi's decision to send superstar Shohei Ohtani one of his company's traditional ironware tea kettles has paid off with a surge of interest from general consumers.
Shohei Ohtani wins National League MVP award
Shohei Ohtani celebrates after hitting a three-run home run against the Padres during the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles last month.
The slow-burn success of ‘A Samurai in Time’
A 19th-century warrior gets struck by lightning and wakes to find himself in 21st-century Kyoto in Junichi Yasuda’s surprise hit “A Samurai in Time.”

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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