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April 08, 2025
 

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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
Nov 2, 2019
Examining a jealousy that's a long way from the green-eyed monster
'Comparison is a very foolish attitude," said Indian mystic Chandra Mohan Jain, popularly known as Osho (1931-90), "because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 19, 2019
Uncontrollable rage is largely a sober phenomenon
How we hate each other.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 19, 2019
Be a frog and jump into Basho's pond
We must know, 'that a haiku does not express ideas but that it puts forward images reflecting intuitions.' — Daisetsu T. Suzuki
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 6, 2019
When everything in life boils down to a bad smell
An 8-year-old schoolgirl having trouble making friends thought it might be because she smelled bad. She sweated heavily. There's not much you can do about it, except wash, and wash, and wash, but the smell remains — in your own mind if not in the nostrils of your classmates — and it grows on you...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 21, 2019
Getting to the bottom of what civilization means in Japan
Progress: good, or bad? Bad, thought Confucius, who for hundreds of years taught Japan to seek its ideals in the ancient past. Good, thought 19th-century modernizers, who redirected the nation's gaze to the future.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 14, 2019
Can Japan's families remain relevant in contemporary times?
"Why don't they get married?" anguished parents wonder of their aging unmarried children.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 14, 2019
The swift rise and fall of Japanese anarchism
Sakae Osugi — born 1885, murdered 1923 — fanned the flames of the peasant Rice Riots in Japan's short-lived age of anarchy.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 31, 2019
Aspiring to achieve forgiveness in the most difficult times
"To be wronged is nothing," said Confucius — "unless you continue to remember it."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 17, 2019
Dissecting the benefits of medical intervention in Japan
"Lies!" "Nonsense!"
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 17, 2019
In the anarchy of Japan's industrial revolution
Japan's Meiji Era (1868-1921) industrial revolution set a scene of chaos for the nation's advocates of political and social change.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 3, 2019
Low voter turnout in Upper House election may reflect an indifference to democracy
In May 1993, general elections were held in Cambodia. Voter turnout was 89.56 percent.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 27, 2019
Tracing the fluctuations in moral standards
"More than 16,500 women and men were sterilized against their will," reads a newsletter published in 1997 by the Network on Ethics and Intellectual Disability.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 20, 2019
Hideyo Noguchi: Under the microscope
Hideyo Noguchi (1876-1928) may be Japan's most famous scientist. His face adorns the u00a51,000 bill. His life story is legendary, folkloric.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 13, 2019
Working harder in a bid to save labor is proving exhausting
The utopia of utopias is "Utopia" by Sir Thomas More (1478-1535). Its best feature is leisure. There are no idle nobles; everyone works. A burden shared is a burden lightened. Utopians "do not wear themselves out with perpetual toil from morning to night, as if they were beasts of burden." They work...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 29, 2019
As dementia cases rise, so a nation's character changes
"Your mother is senile, senile, senile!"
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 15, 2019
'Lawyerlessness' is a luxury Japan can no longer afford
In 1983, Time magazine looked at Japan and saw, to its astonishment, a "land without lawyers." "Most Japanese," said its report, "live — and die — without ever having seen a lawyer." Was this a country, or a mystic brotherhood? In the U.S. there was one lawyer for every 400 citizens; in Japan, one...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 15, 2019
Oshio Heihachiro: Confusing Confucianism
In 1837 famine raged: In Europe, socialist consciousness was dawning, but in Japan, shut tight for two centuries against the outside world, revolt against the established order was Confucian.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 1, 2019
Is disgust with the status quo now feeding nostalgia for the past?
Bulgarian scholar Ivan Krastev, in an interview with the Asahi Shimbun published in March, compared the restless discontent of the 1960s with that of today. Fifty years ago, he said, disgust with the status quo fed hope for the future. Today it feeds nostalgia for the past.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 18, 2019
Aging population spurs drive to tidy nation's cluttered homes
KonMari? Let's, by all means.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 18, 2019
Go-Daigo's mysterious and most loyal warrior
'No famous character in all Japanese history is quite as obscure as Kusunoki Masashige,' writes historian Ivan Morris on 14th-century Emperor Go-Daigo's most loyal samurai.
Nissan says it will not take new U.S. orders for Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs
A Nissan manufacturing complex in Aguascalientes, Mexico. Nissan says it will not take new orders from the United States for two Mexican-built Infiniti SUVs following new auto tariffs levied by the U.S.
Why Japan is running out of rice — and farmers to grow it
An ongoing shortage of rice has resulted in rising prices for Japan's main food staple.
Nikkei plunges in third-biggest daily loss ever amid Trump tariff concerns
Pedestrians stand in front of an electronic board showing the numbers of the Nikkei Stock Average on the Tokyo Stock Exchange along a street in the Japanese capital on Monday.
Ride-hailing services spreading in Japan
Vehicles used for ride-hailing services in the city of Kiryu, in Gunma Prefecture
‘Let’s make it practical’: NATO chief eyes greater defense-industrial ties with Japan
NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte plans to visit Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday — his first to the Indo-Pacific region since taking office in October, as he seeks to implement lessons from the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Tottori takes a bold leap forward in the arts
The city of Kurayoshi in Tottori Prefecture celebrated the opening of its public art museum with festivities such as a parade that drew 1,000 revelers.
Haruki Murakami TV adaptation revisits 30 years of watershed moments
Though Haruki Murakami's trademark whiff of offbeat existentialism is threaded throughout NHK's "After the Quake," the final episode — conceived as a sequel to the story "Super-Frog Saves Tokyo" — is the most stylized, featuring an anthropomorphic talking frog (voiced by Non) and his erstwhile associate Katagiri (Koichi Sato).
Nintendo to launch the Switch 2 on June 5
The controllers for the Switch 2 will attach to the console magnetically rather than sliding on rails as with the original device.
A new human trafficking trend emerges from Myanmar scam centers
Victims of scam centers who were tricked or trafficked into working in Myanmar gather at a compound inside KK Park, a fraud center on the country's border with Thailand, after a multinational crackdown in February.

Podcast

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

Longform

An ongoing shortage of rice has resulted in rising prices for Japan's main food staple.
Why Japan is running out of rice — and farmers to grow it
By Alex K.T. Martin

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