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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 11, 2017
2017 looks more like '1984' than 1984 ever did
Goerge Orwell's '1984' is a fitting best-seller for 2017, a year of 'post-truth,' 'fake news' and 'alternative facts.'
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 25, 2017
Is Abe attempting to fuse the church and state?
It was morning in the land of the gods. "The mountains and the waters serve our sovereign," wrote a seventh-century poet. "And she (Empress Jito), a goddess, is out on her pleasure-barge upon the foaming rapids."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Feb 18, 2017
Japan tries to shed its pessimistic image
Japan ailing? Japan suffering? Nonsense. "Japan is the richest country in the world," proclaims Sapio magazine. And the best. And the happiest. The brightest future looms.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Feb 18, 2017
The evolution of the Japanese ego: 'The Gossamer Years'
There is something morbid about selfhood in Japan. It is not native to the culture. In the West, Judaism, Christianity, philosophy, language itself all teach us to say "I." It is otherwise in Japan.
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 log...
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, wish we...
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,"...
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.
Ishiba aggravates his own political failures with diplomatic faux pas
Prime Minster Shigeru Ishiba is greeted at the APEC summit in Lima by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Friday. The Japanese leader was criticized for remaining seated while meeting several world leaders at the event.
Japan's 3.31 million visitors in October set monthly record
Kiyomizu Temple in Kyoto in December 2023. Famous autumn leaf colors contributed to increased tourism demand last month from many markets across Asia, Europe and North America, the Japan National Tourism Organization has said.
Japan ranks last in romance satisfaction for second straight year
In a survey of 31 countries, Japan ranked last in terms of those who felt loved, with just 51% of respondents saying so.
Ruling coalition and DPP strike last-minute deal over economic policy
DPP policy chief Makoto Mahaguchi speaks at the party's policy gathering in Tokyo on Wednesday.
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.
Japanese expats in Asia find community through rugby
The Taiwan Fivewoods celebrate their victory at the 2023 Asian Japanese Rugby Cup in December of last year.
In Fukushima, a weekend of prose, poetry and translation
Aomori-based writer JJ Carter presented on tabletop gaming as creative inspiration for building characters and narratives.
For Dr. Nakamats, aging is just experience in action
Though he didn't win the recent gubernatorial election in Tokyo, the 96-year-old Dr. Nakamats' run was seen as inspirational in Japan's aging society.

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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