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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 / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 12, 2016
Beneath the chaos, an old new order
We are all going to die. Most of us will die miserably — it's in the nature of things. Hopefully none of us, infirm in body and mind, will die falling from an upper story of a nursing care home, pushed to our deaths by a disgruntled care worker. That three people did die in that fashion at one particular...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 27, 2016
Rocket tests have Japanese media wondering: How do you solve a problem like (North) Korea?
North Korea — what to make of it? Nobody knows. In an age of secrecy stripped bare, it has succeeded in being unfathomable. It's horrible — on that most observers agree; but how horrible? To what purpose? In spite of, or because of, what obstacles to its survival?
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Feb 20, 2016
The Meiji Era and the soul of Japan: part 1
'Japan's first modern novel" was published serially between 1887 and 1889.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 13, 2016
One slip can sink a salaryman's career
'I've always been shy," says Kazuo. "Face-to-face communication never came easily to me." At 48, he's been out of work five years. He lives with his mother, who's close to 80 — mostly off her pension. A typical day — typical not only of him, says the weekly Spa!, but of an increasing number of middle-aged...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 30, 2016
Is society on the cusp of massive change?
Philosopher Tatsuru Uchida, interviewed earlier this month by the Asahi Shimbun, merely confirms what we all know, or sense, when he says: "This is an age of transition. We're going through the confusion characteristic of bedrock change."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 16, 2016
From sexual liberation to liberation from sex
Young people are forever shocking their elders, and elders, however shocking they themselves may have been to their own elders once upon a time, never fail to play their generation's perennial role of shocked onlookers to shocking youthful behavior of one sort or another.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jan 16, 2016
'It is I who rule' — Japan's 'Manyoshu' morning
What fun civilization is in its infancy! How bright and fresh the world looks at the dawn of consciousness! Listen:
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 2, 2016
Still dreaming of an end to household drudgery
As amazing as technology's ability to solve our problems is its inability to solve our problems. (Its tendency to create new problems is a subject best left for another day.)
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 26, 2015
Can democracy survive the rise of the right?
"What," demanded a protesting student at the height of the summer of protests just past, "is to become of democracy?"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Dec 19, 2015
Japan's 'Christian century' failed to blossom
Christmas approaches. Christian or not, the mind turns to Christian themes.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 5, 2015
Hunter and hunted: Where are they now?
The mutilations are frightful — dog, cat, rabbit and pigeon corpses missing heads, tails, limbs, ears. Weekly Playboy magazine reports nearly 40 sightings in the past four months in the Kanto region alone. Who's out there doing these things? With what thoughts in mind?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 28, 2015
Japan's children face a dementia boom
Confucius said it's not enough merely to provide for our parents. We must revere them. To fail in filial reverence, he said, is to be no better than the animals.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 14, 2015
More couples saying, 'I do ... but not yet'
"Just the other day I had a date with a woman. We were planning on seeing a movie but it was such a beautiful day that I said, 'We can see a movie anytime, let's watch the sunset instead.' She was furious: 'Why didn't you say so in the first place?'"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Nov 14, 2015
Surviving a sudden transition to democracy
What is the worst thing that has ever happened to humankind?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 7, 2015
Without doubt, company executives will just go with the flow
Asahi Kasei. Toyo Tire & Rubber. Toshiba. What's the connection? Executives lined up before the cameras, bowing their heads in shame.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 24, 2015
Media vultures circle over battered SEALDs
That's it? It's over?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 17, 2015
True Edo spirit can be found while soaking in a public bath
"Public baths are the shortest route there is to moral and spiritual enlightenment. Careful reflection shows this."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 10, 2015
It's a small world, with no respect for islands
To what extent are your problems my problems? To what extent are Syria's troubles Japan's?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 26, 2015
Ashes to diamonds and the cost of death
'Where do we go when we die?"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 19, 2015
Government's affinity to the universe, religion
Supposing we think of the universe this way: there is Heaven and there is Earth; nothing else — no other worlds, no gods. "Heaven" is roughly analogous to what we moderns call "Nature." Heaven's laws, however, unlike Nature's, are moral, not physical.
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.
Tokyo Metro’s overseas efforts begin in earnest with London deal
Tokyo Metro will soon have a role in the running of London's Elizabeth Line, a major train route serving the U.K.’s capital city and environs.
Russia fired experimental ballistic missile at Ukraine, Putin says
Ukrainian firefighters work on a spot following an airstrike in Dnipro on Thursday.
Ex-yokozuna Kitanofuji dies at 82
Yokozuna Kitanofuji enters the ring during the May 1970 grand sumo tournament in Tokyo.
Man charged with murder allegedly made victim date other men for money
A car carrying suspect Ryotaro Masuda, who was indicted for allegedly beating his 25-year-old girlfriend to death, leaves the Shibuya Police Station in Tokyo on Thursday.
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.”
Around a quarter of Japan married couples in their 20s met through dating apps
A survey released by an organization promoting “Good Couples Day” shows that 24% of couples in their 20s met their marriage partner through a dating app.
'Tokyo Swindlers': Get deep into the minds of real estate con artists
In Ko Shinjo's "Tokyo Swindlers," a group of con artists manipulates real estate giants into falsified deals within the highly competitive, quick market.
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.

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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