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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 / 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 particular...
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 of middle-aged...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 30, 2016
Is society on the cusp of massive change?
Philosopher Tatsuru Uchida, interviewed earlier this month by the Asahi Shimbun, merely confirms what we all know, or sense, when he says: "This is an age of transition. We're going through the confusion characteristic of bedrock change."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 16, 2016
From sexual liberation to liberation from sex
Young people are forever shocking their elders, and elders, however shocking they themselves may have been to their own elders once upon a time, never fail to play their generation's perennial role of shocked onlookers to shocking youthful behavior of one sort or another.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jan 16, 2016
'It is I who rule' — Japan's 'Manyoshu' morning
What fun civilization is in its infancy! How bright and fresh the world looks at the dawn of consciousness! Listen:
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jan 2, 2016
Still dreaming of an end to household drudgery
As amazing as technology's ability to solve our problems is its inability to solve our problems. (Its tendency to create new problems is a subject best left for another day.)
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 26, 2015
Can democracy survive the rise of the right?
"What," demanded a protesting student at the height of the summer of protests just past, "is to become of democracy?"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Dec 19, 2015
Japan's 'Christian century' failed to blossom
Christmas approaches. Christian or not, the mind turns to Christian themes.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 5, 2015
Hunter and hunted: Where are they now?
The mutilations are frightful — dog, cat, rabbit and pigeon corpses missing heads, tails, limbs, ears. Weekly Playboy magazine reports nearly 40 sightings in the past four months in the Kanto region alone. Who's out there doing these things? With what thoughts in mind?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 28, 2015
Japan's children face a dementia boom
Confucius said it's not enough merely to provide for our parents. We must revere them. To fail in filial reverence, he said, is to be no better than the animals.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 14, 2015
More couples saying, 'I do ... but not yet'
"Just the other day I had a date with a woman. We were planning on seeing a movie but it was such a beautiful day that I said, 'We can see a movie anytime, let's watch the sunset instead.' She was furious: 'Why didn't you say so in the first place?'"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Nov 14, 2015
Surviving a sudden transition to democracy
What is the worst thing that has ever happened to humankind?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 7, 2015
Without doubt, company executives will just go with the flow
Asahi Kasei. Toyo Tire & Rubber. Toshiba. What's the connection? Executives lined up before the cameras, bowing their heads in shame.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 24, 2015
Media vultures circle over battered SEALDs
That's it? It's over?
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
Taiwan eyes zero tariffs with U.S. and pledges more investment
Kids view the area from a lookout point over cranes and containers at the Port of Keelung, Taiwan, on Thursday.
‘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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