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July 16, 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
Feb 4, 2017
Does contemporary Japan need religion?
“God, Buddha — where are they?” asks Aera magazine.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 21, 2017
In uncertain times, Japan opts to save
A funny thing happened on the way to the marketplace. The crowd thinned out. Consumption? Been there, done that. Enough.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 14, 2017
The little black screen we just can't take our eyes off
A great weight sits perched on us. It's called a head. It houses our brain and presents our face to the world. It comprises roughly 10 percent of our body weight. Heavy enough at the best of times, it grows heavier as it inclines forward. Held high, it's a 5.5-kilogram burden on the neck of a person...
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jan 14, 2017
The evolution of the Japanese ego: Learning to say 'I'
When Adam and Eve defied God, creator and master of the universe, and ate the fruit of the tree of knowledge, what did they learn? To say "I."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 31, 2016
Japan and the world enter a long night of 'post-truth'
In an essay titled "The Future of Mankind," British philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872-1970) laid out three possibilities: "The end of human life," "a reversion to barbarism" or "unification of the world under a single government." He saw the third as the only alternative to either of the first two....
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 17, 2016
Western culture and the end of Japanese 'harmony'
Japan grew up with wa (harmony). Conflict and competition are the creative engines of Western civilization; Japan traveled a different route to the tumultuous present.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Dec 10, 2016
Meiji Restoration leader's lessons of sincerity
Is there any understanding a man like Saigo Takamori? His spirit seems as vast as his bulk, and his bulk was that of a sumo wrestler. He is "the quintessential hero of modern Japanese history," said historian Ivan Morris.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 3, 2016
What shape will populism take in modern Japan?
Populism isn't new. A wave of it generated democracy in ancient Greece, circa 500 B.C. Its modern form, born in America in the early 19th century, was a revolt against the planter aristocracy that had governed since independence in 1776. Andrew Jackson — said to be the first president born in a...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 19, 2016
Will Trump join forces with Abe or push him toward Putin?
What do intellectuals know?
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Nov 19, 2016
Vileness is a quality more repugnant than evil
There is a kind of moral ugliness that, without being quite evil, may be even more repellant than evil because evil — genuine evil — has, sometimes, a certain romantic appeal. You can admire the villain's strength, or courage, or dash, or reckless defiance of that which we all, sometimes,...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 12, 2016
South Sudan and Japan: a tale of love and civil war
If you can call South Sudan "stable," you can call anything stable. You can call anything anything.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 5, 2016
The unbearable burden of 24/7 work
There was no nonsense about the 1990s in Japan. The economy had crashed, the bubble had burst. "The age of human relationships is over," declared a corporate executive to Aera magazine in 1996, defending the cost-cutting layoffs then gathering speed. "This is the era of the discount store. The only sales...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 15, 2016
The audacity of trust: defying the dangers of life in Japan
I am a very trusting fellow. When I cross the street I trust the driver of the approaching vehicle to suppress whatever rage or hatred my appearance may inspire and not mow me down. I walk down the street trusting those within knife-range not to have a knife, or whoever has one not to be in the grip...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 15, 2016
Fifteenth-century shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa: Impotent or indifferent?
'The Creation of the Soul of Japan" is how Donald Keene, the eminent Japanologist, subtitled his 2003 biography of 15th-century shogun Ashikaga Yoshimasa. What is the soul of Japan? Tea, flowers, noh drama, simplicity, suggestiveness. War too — but Yoshimasa had no taste for war. No taste for power...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 1, 2016
Who advises Japan's business leaders?
Take a wild guess: Who's the second most influential management guru in Japan, after — it almost goes without saying — Peter Drucker?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 17, 2016
'Elderly terrorists' and 'hidden poverty' — Japan's new normal?
It's hard to read Spa! magazine without feeling that something is dreadfully wrong with Japan. Week after week, it pursues themes that soon grow familiar: hopeless poverty, pointless toil, unrelieved loneliness. In just one issue this month (Sept. 6) it tackles, in separate articles, "hidden poverty,"...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 17, 2016
The rise of a toxic machine named fascism
Why not fascism?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 3, 2016
Building a stairway to the singularity
A computer's victory over a human go master this past March reminds us of the pending "singularity" — the rapidly approaching moment in time when artificial intelligence overtakes human intelligence. Machines will learn, and we won't be their teachers. Are we prepared for it? Can we prepare for...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 20, 2016
How to teach moral education in a relative age?
The wartime moral ideal was blind obedience and self-sacrificing devotion to the nation. Could the upgrading of moral education be a first step on the road back to that?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 20, 2016
An awakening gives birth to modern medicine
Illness we share with our ancestors. Diagnosis and remedies set us and them apart.
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Bloodied Trump survives assassination attempt at political rally
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded and evacuated by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was rushed off stage at the rally after shots rang out.
Shooter came within inches of killing Trump, but left few clues as to why
An aerial view shows the stage where Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump had been standing during an assassination attempt the day before, and the roof of a nearby building where a gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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