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April 18, 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
LIFE
Nov 25, 2012
The Fish Tree
Once upon a time there was a child who, being a child, simply didn't know what to make of himself. "Look," said his mother. "I brought the sun out for you. Go out and play."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 11, 2012
The changing face of fatherhood in Japan
My maiden brush with paternity in Japan was in 1982. New to the country and new to my job, I said to my boss, "My wife is expecting a baby on such-and-such a day and I'll want that day off."
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Nov 5, 2012
Cooperation is needed to solve global economic crisis
Everybody agrees: We need kōdō (行動, action). What 行動, though? And whose? That's where the unanimity crumbles.
CULTURE / Books
Nov 4, 2012
Finding the Way in art of war
THE DAO OF THE MILITARY: Liu An's Art of War, translated by Andrew Seth Meyer. Columbia University Press, 2012, 157 pp., $19.50 (paperback) There are two ancient Chinese texts titled "The Art of War." Liu An's, the one under review, newly translated by historian Andrew Meyer, is the less famous.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 28, 2012
You can't choose your (invisible) neighbors
Some animals are solitary. Others live in flocks or herds. Human beings are somewhere in between. Our sociability and our economic needs force us into communities, where our misanthropy, meanness and selfishness — or maybe it's an instinctive craving for solitude — can make our neighbors' presence...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 14, 2012
Women in their 40s have it better than men
It was a shock and a disappointment to learn, courtesy of a survey released in August by the Dai-ichi Life Research Institute, that men in their 40s are the unhappiest people in Japan. Who are the happiest? This is even more surprising: men in their 80s. That gives younger men something to look forward...
Japan Times
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Oct 1, 2012
The unneighborly side of nationalism
It's out in the open now: Japan is not well liked in its neighborhood, and it doesn't take much to dissolve the surface civilities.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 30, 2012
What nightmares may come, when we shuffle onto an immortal coil
"In 20 years human beings will neither die nor age."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 23, 2012
No trusting those who descend from heaven
Just for fun, try this whimsical little experiment: search the Japan Times website for "regain trust." It's an expression that recurs so often, and has such a long history, you'd almost think it meant something.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 9, 2012
Joy among the clouds and shadows
Yoko Sakata was an ordinary "office lady," not earning much and not aspiring to much, when she began suspecting her boyfriend of having an affair. She hired a private detective, who confirmed her fears and then paid her a compliment: "You have good intuition." He offered her a job. She grabbed it. That...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Sep 3, 2012
Imagine a better Olympics for Japan
"Sekai wa itsuka hitotsu ni naru" (「世界はいつかひとつになる」) — that's what "And the world will be as one," from John Lennon's "Imagine," sounds like in Japanese, at least according to the Asahi Shimbun. The matter arises in connection with the dai sanjukkai orinpikku kyogitaikai (第三十回オリンピック競技大会,...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 26, 2012
Complacency perished in the Fukushima nuclear disaster
August, that most searing of months, compels us to reflect on the atom. Japan was atom-bombed twice in August 67 years ago, and Hiroshima since 1952 and Nagasaki since 1955 have hosted solemn anniversary ceremonies to keep the memory alive in the hope of preventing similar horror and folly in future....
CULTURE / Books
Aug 19, 2012
Japanese-Americans: life after the war and internment
AFTER CAMP: Portraits in Midcentury Japanese American Life and Politics, by Greg Robinson. University of California Press, 2012, 328 pp., $27.95 (paperback) "A Jap is a Jap."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 12, 2012
Seeking eternal youth in an aging society
Here's an idea: we all retire at 40.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 6, 2012
School bullies need to take responsibility for their actions
He left no isho (遺書, suicide note), so his deepest feelings can only be guessed — first from his jisatsu (自殺, suicide) at age 13, and secondly from the testimony of dōkyūsei (同級生, classmates) elicited in a tardy and grudging school and police investigation into the case.
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 29, 2012
The Taisho Era: When modernity ruled Japan's masses
"Democracy is so popular these days!" — "The Democracy Song," 1919
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 29, 2012
Revolution was in the air during Japan's Taisho Era, but soon evaporated into the status quo
In the summer of 1918, "rice riots" swept the country. They began in a fishing village on the Sea of Japan in remote Toyama Prefecture. By September, some 2 million people in hundreds of municipalities had taken to the streets. They looted, bombed, demonstrated, struck.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 29, 2012
Who can we vote for to avoid the worst-case scenario?
"Japan's Worst-Case Scenarios" — that's the title of the lead feature in the July issue of the monthly Takarajima. No one writing on such a theme need fear a shortage of material. The magazine easily fills 40 pages analyzing catastrophes and catastrophes-in-waiting: Tokyo leveled by a magnitude 9 quake;...
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 29, 2012
'Taisho Democracy' pays the ultimate price
Party politics seems as natural to many of us today as government itself, but imagine how it looked to the uninitiated 150 years ago.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 15, 2012
Aging Village shows the way with switch to solar
Eighty kilometers from Oi, Fukui Prefecture, is the village of Sanno, Hyogo Prefecture — 11 households, population 42, average age 60 plus.
In a first, Japan issues cease-and-desist order against Google
The Google logo is seen at the company's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California. Japanese authorities on Tuesday issued a cease-and-desist order to Google over an alleged violation of the country's anti-monopoly law.
Japan and the U.S. begin tariff talks on good terms, but without breakthroughs
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator, speaks to reporters in Washington on Wednesday.
Trump calls the U.S.-Japan alliance ‘one-sided.’ Tokyo says otherwise.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Thursday in Washington.
Tokyo hotel operators face possible warnings over suspected price cartel
Foreign tourists gather on a platform at Kyoto Station on Wednesday.
China executes man over Japanese school bus stop murder
The bus stop in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China, where a Japanese mother, her child, and a Chinese woman were attacked in June 2024
Tokyo hotel operators face possible warnings over suspected price cartel
Foreign tourists gather on a platform at Kyoto Station on Wednesday.
Kyotographie 2025 opts for laughter and levity in the face of global strife
Palestinian American photographer Adam Rouhana’s exhibition at this year’s Kyotographie festival shows Palestinian life, not death and rubble.
Privacy and transparency clash in debate over bill on artificial insemination
Sachiko Ishizuka, who was born via artificial insemination by donor (AID), tells her story to lawmakers from the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan on April 9.
Why Ishiba became the first prime minister to hold talks with Rengo in 16 years
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and Japanese Trade Union Confederation chief Tomoko Yoshino in a meeting Tuesday at the Prime Minister's Office
In a first, Japan issues cease-and-desist order against Google
The Google logo is seen at the company's Bay View campus in Mountain View, California. Japanese authorities on Tuesday issued a cease-and-desist order to Google over an alleged violation of the country's anti-monopoly law.

Podcast

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

Longform

Visitors walk past Sou Fujimoto's Grand Ring, which has been recognized as the largest wooden structure in the world.
Can a World Expo still matter? Japan is about to find out.
By Tomoko Otake

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