author

 
Menu
Search
 
November 22, 2024
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access
Michael Hoffman

Meta

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 / 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 it?...
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.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 13, 2016
A world gone mad? That's quite absurd!
Real life is getting too absurd for absurd theater — or so reckons one absurdist playwright. Does he have a point?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 23, 2016
A dark age dawns for politics in Japan
"Historic," that much-overused word, seems almost acceptable as a description of the Upper House elections earlier this month that gave Japan — for the first time in its postwar history — a government strong enough to get serious about rewriting the Constitution.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 16, 2016
'Zen's sudden awakening to the truth beyond reason, beyond language'
Rabbi Zusia tramped through his native Poland — this admittedly is an odd way of introducing a story about Zen — collecting money to ransom Jews unjustly imprisoned, victims of the rampant anti-Semitism then prevailing. At a wayside inn he saw birds in a cage. Zusia, simple soul that he was, promptly...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 9, 2016
Cracks are appearing in Japan's 'healthy' image
Few people snack on baby carrots. Most prefer the sweet, fat, high-calorie fare colloquially known as junk food.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 25, 2016
A confused, senile future awaits Japan
Confucius said: "When your parents are alive, serve them according to ritual. When they die, bury them according to ritual, make sacrifices to them according to ritual."
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 18, 2016
Absolutism: an acceptable price to pay for order
His contemporaries hardly knew what to make of him. Their bewilderment is reflected in the name by which he is best known to us: the "dog shogun."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 11, 2016
In Japan, all that is true melts into hot air
'Is it because the truth is so boring," asked the 14th-century monk Yoshida no Kenko in a classic collection of musings known as the "The Grasses of Idleness," "that most stories one hears are false?"
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 28, 2016
Poverty and boredom gnaw at Japan
Boredom, poverty and war: three themes you’d think (wrongly) would be extinct by now — war because humankind as a whole is more peaceably inclined than ever before, poverty because of an abundance of riches and boredom because ... doesn't it go without saying, given the endless stream, not to say...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 14, 2016
There's no escape from big data's eye
I am being watched. I am under surveillance. So are you. There are eyes on us, or maybe it's just one eye. Singular or plural, it is/they are ubiquitous, all-seeing. It/they never sleep(s). So much the better, for at least two reasons: 1) We are better protected, and 2) we are better informed.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 14, 2016
Has pacifism always been doomed to fail in Japan?
Japan had a pacifist "constitution" long before 1947, when the current one went into effect. It was issued in the year 604, its author so esteemed, in his own time and since, as to merit the posthumous name Shotoku Taishi (Crown Prince Sage-Virtue). His lifetime (574-622) spanned an early phase of Japan's...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 30, 2016
Human primacy is go-ing, go-ing, gone
It is said of the ancient Chinese game go that the number of possible positions on its board exceeds the number of atoms in the known universe.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 16, 2016
Can Japan make itself great again by 2050?
The bad news is, Japan is beset by seemingly insoluble problems. The good news is the word "seemingly." No nation whose rise to economic superpowerdom began a bare decade after being bombed to rubble in history's most destructive war will ever find anything truly "insoluble." Japan will astonish us yet....
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Apr 16, 2016
Understanding Heian nobles’ snobbishness
Once upon a time — the fairy tale opening is apt, though it's history we're dealing with — peace lay so thick upon the land that war was inconceivable. The capital was a city named "Peace and Tranquility" — Hei-An (modern-day Kyoto). There was a ministry of war, but the war minister was no fighter;...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 9, 2016
Japan is as happy as it feels — miserable
Who are the unhappiest people, asks Spa — the married, the single or the divorced?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 26, 2016
'Teflon Abe' gets high marks despite unpopular policies
Is Japan a democracy?
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Mar 19, 2016
The Meiji Era and the soul of Japan: part 2
An ambitious young man of the 1880s, flattering a girl he may want to marry (or may not, if a more advantageous alliance materializes), asks her, "What are you reading these days, Osei?" When Osei in reply mentions "Outlines of the World's History" by William Swinton, Noboru, the young man, is suitably...
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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

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

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER