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July 16, 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
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,...
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...
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...
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...
Who needs AI when you have Hatsune Miku?
Over the first six months of 2024, a handful of songs using Vocaloid singer Hatsune Miku’s voice have enjoyed widespread attention, underlining a global interest in the character and the technology she represents.
Bloodied Trump survives assassination attempt at political rally
Former U.S. President Donald Trump is surrounded and evacuated by Secret Service agents at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday. Trump was rushed off stage at the rally after shots rang out.
Shooter came within inches of killing Trump, but left few clues as to why
An aerial view shows the stage where Republican presidential candidate and former U.S. President Donald Trump had been standing during an assassination attempt the day before, and the roof of a nearby building where a gunman was shot dead by law enforcement, in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Sunday.
Yen’s woes seem too big for even a BOJ hike this month to solve
The Bank of Japan headquarters in Tokyo
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
How to beat Japan’s summer heat in ways better for the planet
Tenugui towels hang up to dry at a dyeing company in Sakai, Osaka Prefecture, on May 8. The durable and versatile tenugui, which many people have in their homes, can be used in many ways to cool one’s body.
After Trump shooting, U.S. presidential race might take a violent turn
United States Secret Service Counter Snipers stand guard on a rooftop during a campaign rally for U.S. President Donald Trump in Avoca, Pennsylvania, in 2020.
No AC this summer? No problem (for me).
Think air conditioning is a requirement for a Tokyo summer? Think again.
She’s paying ¥1 million to help behind the scenes at the Paris Olympics
Mai Tarumi, who previously volunteered at the postponed Tokyo Olympics in 2021, has a travel budget of ¥1 million for her trip to volunteer at the Paris Games.
How to tweak your diet when temperatures spike
Most people think of hydration as a strictly liquid-based concept, but eating foods with high water content is an essential part of making it through a Japanese summer unscathed.

Podcast

You can often see generations of families enjoying performances together at Fuji Rock Festival.
Japan’s summer music festivals are feeling the heat in more ways than one

Longform

Akiko Trush says her experience with the neurological disorder dystonia left her feeling like she wanted to chop her own hand off.
The neurological disorder that 'kills culture'
By Tomoko Otake

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