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August 15, 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 / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 3, 2013
Constitutional revision may bring less freedom
Article 18 of Japan's Constitution states, "No person shall be held in bondage of any kind. Involuntary servitude, except as punishment for crime, is prohibited."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Jan 26, 2013
Nothing much compels reader to sympathize with characters
RIVER OF FIRE and Other Stories, by O Chonghui. Translated by Bruce and Ju-chan Fulton. Columbia University Press, 2012, 224 pp., $27.50 (hardcover)
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 19, 2013
Japan's growing diaspora reflects concern for the country's future
Here's a surprising fact: One Japanese in a hundred lives abroad. It's surprising because so much is made lately of Japan's growing insularity. Young people seem less interested than ever in studying overseas, and voters last month elected a new government whose platform includes strong doses of patriotism...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jan 7, 2013
No loss for words when expressing scale of DPJ's defeat
December's election aftermath offered a good chance to learn synonyms for "crushing defeat" and "overwhelming victory." Taihai (大敗, great defeat), kanpai (完敗, total defeat) — not to be confused with kanpai! (乾杯, cheers!) — kaimetsutekina haiboku (壊滅的な敗北, annihilating defeat),...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 6, 2013
Additives: Let's hope we are not what we eat
Four-legged chickens
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 30, 2012
As the new year approaches, Japan still reels from 2011
What a sad, sad country this is. What sad shape it's in, as this Year of the Dragon draws to a close. Economically, politically socially, individually, it is merely scraping by, surviving rather than living.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 23, 2012
Abe is a hawk, the public merely conservative
Commenting acidly on November's U.S. presidential election, American columnist George Will said all it showed was "whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney has the smaller gigantic number of Americans not wanting him to be president." Substitute the names of Prime Minister-elect Shinzo Abe and outgoing Prime...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / THE YEAR IN BOOKS
Dec 23, 2012
Four aspects of Japan's history
"Oh, what happy people they must have been!" Thus Yukie Chiri (1903-22), reflecting on the pristine past of her people, the Ainu of southwestern Hokkaido. "Ainu Spirits Singing" (University of Hawaii Press) by Sarah Strong is an elegy to a lost time and an almost lost culture, seen largely through Chiri's...
Japan Times
WORLD
Dec 9, 2012
The ends of the world
We are doomed. Are we doomed? December 21, 2012 is 12 days away. The world will end on that day, says the ancient Mayan calendar. Or does it say that? Whether it does or not (most experts now agree it does not) other dangers loom — a fatal "galactic alignment," a mysterious wandering planet on a collision...
Japan Times
LIFE
Dec 9, 2012
Our deepest fears fuel the booming business of doomsday scenarios
Apocalypse 2012 was born in 1996.
LIFE
Dec 9, 2012
Apocalypse made in Japan
A world-ending cataclysm is common to many mythologies. The Biblical flood narrative is the best known and follows a fairly typical pattern: wrathful deity, mass destruction, surviving remnant — in this case the righteous man Noah and his family. We gather from these tales that life to early humans...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language
Dec 3, 2012
A third force enters the election race
On Nov. 16 Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda shūin wo kaisan shita (衆院を解散した, dissolved the Diet's Lower House). In August he had promised to do it "chikai uchi ni" (「近いうちに」"soon"). The term is elastic and the governing Minshuto (民主党, Democratic Party of Japan, DPJ) stretched...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 2, 2012
Silent majority blasted by political noise
Here's another election upon us — a fitting time to reflect on tranquility and its opposite, cacophony.
Japan Times
LIFE
Nov 25, 2012
The Fish Tree
Once upon a time there was a child who, being a child, simply didn't know what to make of himself. "Look," said his mother. "I brought the sun out for you. Go out and play."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 11, 2012
The changing face of fatherhood in Japan
My maiden brush with paternity in Japan was in 1982. New to the country and new to my job, I said to my boss, "My wife is expecting a baby on such-and-such a day and I'll want that day off."
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 5, 2012
Cooperation is needed to solve global economic crisis
Everybody agrees: We need kōdō (行動, action). What 行動, though? And whose? That's where the unanimity crumbles.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 4, 2012
Finding the Way in art of war
THE DAO OF THE MILITARY: Liu An's Art of War, translated by Andrew Seth Meyer. Columbia University Press, 2012, 157 pp., $19.50 (paperback) There are two ancient Chinese texts titled "The Art of War." Liu An's, the one under review, newly translated by historian Andrew Meyer, is the less famous.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 28, 2012
You can't choose your (invisible) neighbors
Some animals are solitary. Others live in flocks or herds. Human beings are somewhere in between. Our sociability and our economic needs force us into communities, where our misanthropy, meanness and selfishness — or maybe it's an instinctive craving for solitude — can make our neighbors' presence...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 14, 2012
Women in their 40s have it better than men
It was a shock and a disappointment to learn, courtesy of a survey released in August by the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, that men in their 40s are the unhappiest people in Japan. Who are the happiest? This is even more surprising: men in their 80s. That gives younger men something to look forward...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 1, 2012
The unneighborly side of nationalism
It's out in the open now: Japan is not well liked in its neighborhood, and it doesn't take much to dissolve the surface civilities.
Japan to revise consumption tax exemption for overseas tourists
Tourists walk through Nakamise shopping street near Sensoji Temple in Tokyo in April
Japan's tourism industry hit by cancellations after megaquake alert
A beach closed due to a megaquake alert in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, from Friday to Thursday.
Focus shifts to incoming typhoon as Tropical Storm Maria dissipates
Newly formed Tropical Storm Ampil, which is forecast to approach eastern Japan this weekend, is seen on the left side of this satellite image.
Kishida to step down in September in bid to show ‘LDP has changed’
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a news conference Wednesday at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo.
Publisher finds surprise audience after translating history textbooks
Yamakawa Shuppansha president Takeshi Nozawa holds the publisher's textbook on Japanese history — used in high schools across Japan — alongside the new English version in Tokyo on May 23.
Economic security is about strengthening and sustaining growth, former minister says
Former economic security minister Takayuki Kobayashi says changes in the international balance of power, along with deepening economic interdependence, have led some countries to attempt to use their economic power to impose their will on others.
Ice bandanas, convenience store breaks: Running under Japan’s summer sun
Blistering heat is becoming a fixture of summer in Japan, but a few tweaks to your routine can make your outdoor runs bearable — if not enjoyable — until cooler temperatures return.
Japan issued its first-ever megaquake alert. What does that mean?
Naoshi Hirata (center), chairman of a committee tasked with evaluating the risk of a Nankai Trough earthquake, speaks at a news conference in Tokyo on Friday.
France brings down the curtain on its Olympic party with Tom Cruise and Leon Marchand
Fireworks are set off during the closing ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympics at Stade de France in Saint-Denis on Sunday.
Japan fuels U.S. LNG boom even as climate targets and impacts loom
Flaring at the Cameron LNG export terminal in Hackberry, Louisiana. Flaring, a common sight at LNG plants, is a controlled burning of gas for reasons ranging from depressurizing equipment to disposing of gas that can’t be used. The practice is a "waste of money" and negatively impacts climate change and human health, says the International Energy Agency.

Podcast

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

Longform

Sociologist Gracia Liu-Farrer argues that even though immigration doesn't figure into Japan's autobiography, it is more of a self-perception than a reality.
In search of the ‘Japanese dream’
By Thu-Huong Ha

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’
Azabudai Hills, Tokyo’s green new downtown ‘village’

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