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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
Sep 15, 2018
News outlets fret over the nation's docile democracy
"Nazism." "Fascism." "1984." "Kamikaze." Strong words, suggestive language. It's going mainstream.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 15, 2018
The long struggle to become international
Eighth-century Japan was an infant civilization. Its prehistory had been long. Awakened at last, Japan drank eagerly from the source: China, then at its creative peak.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 8, 2018
Japan loses sleep over a variety of modern-day issues
"O sleep, o gentle sleep, nature's soft nurse" — Shakespeare, as usual, says it best.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 25, 2018
The efforts of Japan's first female doctor are worth remembering
Ginko Ogino deserves to be better known — especially now.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 18, 2018
Heian literature: Is all fair in love and no war?
There's nothing quite like Japan's Heian Period (794-1185). Almost four centuries of peace and a governing aristocracy of culture set it apart.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 11, 2018
Solitude appears to have an image problem in Japan
"Is solitude an illness?"
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 21, 2018
Learning to live with a vulnerability to violent actions
Nature bursts its bounds. People seethe and erupt.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History
Jul 14, 2018
Japan was slow to drive its pigs to the market
Ancient Japan appears to us as a land of warriors, priests, aristocrats, artists, poets, lovers, peasants — but one group is missing.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 7, 2018
Exploring the bare difference between a truth and a lie
"Kill one man, and you're a murderer. Kill millions, and you are a conqueror. Kill them all, and you are a god."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 23, 2018
Marriage is not always the bed of roses it's supposed to be
Whenever you read about people doing things you yourself would never dream of doing, you naturally wonder: Is it a warped individual nature that is to blame? Is it the nature of the time, the place, the circumstances?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 16, 2018
Japan's gods: More benevolent than fearsome
The most violent episode in Japanese mythology is the rampage through the Sun Goddess' rice fields by her unruly brother Susano'o, the Storm God.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 9, 2018
Communication difficulties continue to torment Japan
If communication is measurable in terms of number of words, we are the greatest communicators in the history of our species. Question: Who's listening?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 26, 2018
You can't plan for bad luck in the long winter of life
Wisdom is age and age is wisdom. Confucius, summing up his life, said, "At 70 I followed my heart's desire without overstepping the line." It's as good a definition of wisdom as any.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
May 19, 2018
Watanabe Kazan: Too open-minded for Edo
Imagine living in a 'closed country.' Japan was such for over two centuries, from the anti-Christian hysteria of the 1630s to the incursion in the 1850s of the American 'Black Ships.'
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 12, 2018
Japan redraws its line in the sand for poverty
If an income of ¥10 million a year can't save you from poverty, what can?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 28, 2018
Confronting the definition of a 'moral education'
How can people be taught to be good? What does "good" mean? "Moral education," the education ministry explains on its website, "aims to develop a Japanese citizen who will never lose the consistent spirit of respect for his fellow man; who will realize this spirit at home, at school and in other actual...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 14, 2018
Japan faces up to the prospect of losing a middle-class war
Modern middle-class life, you could reasonably argue, generates more happiness among more people than any other ever conceived. It has been extravagantly derided — as bourgeois, soulless, spiritless, narrow, boring, mindlessly acquisitive and so on. But back in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when...
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Apr 14, 2018
Ando Shoeki: He who dared anger the gods
A mind like Shoeki Ando — bold, mischievous, unconventional, borderline crackpot, one might almost say — is worth probing, if only for those qualities, let alone for his ideas, which leave the mainstream so far behind that the word 'evil' has been attached to him.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 31, 2018
Too much of an education could be bad for your future
While school rucksacks in Japan may be getting heavier, the prospects for the over-educated may be getting bleaker.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 24, 2018
World debates what action to take over North Korea
Nine years after then-U.S President Barack Obama committed America to the pursuit of "a world without nuclear weapons," nine months after the U.N. adopted the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons and five months after the Nobel Peace Prize Committee conferred one of the world's highest honors...
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.

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