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August 29, 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 / 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?
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 17, 2015
True Edo spirit can be found while soaking in a public bath
"Public baths are the shortest route there is to moral and spiritual enlightenment. Careful reflection shows this."
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 10, 2015
It's a small world, with no respect for islands
To what extent are your problems my problems? To what extent are Syria's troubles Japan's?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 26, 2015
Ashes to diamonds and the cost of death
'Where do we go when we die?"
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 19, 2015
Government's affinity to the universe, religion
Supposing we think of the universe this way: there is Heaven and there is Earth; nothing else — no other worlds, no gods. "Heaven" is roughly analogous to what we moderns call "Nature." Heaven's laws, however, unlike Nature's, are moral, not physical.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 12, 2015
Will the bullies inherit Japan's top jobs?
Why aren't people nice, good and kind?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 29, 2015
Only a teenager, yet an expert on war
'The last war was the worst."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 15, 2015
Add looming poverty to list of seniors' woes
What a sad country this is. Granted, Spa! magazine paints in primary colors. Maybe it's missing a nuance or two? Maybe things aren't really so bad? Maybe. Hopefully.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 15, 2015
The fraught debate over science and divinity
Truth is a sordid business. It brings nations down to earth, cuts people down to size. Why honor it, therefore? Why esteem it above myth, which does the opposite, raising nations to the gods and turning ordinary, unremarkable people into subjects of divine rulers?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 1, 2015
A political turning point for Japan's youth
July 15, 2015, will go down in Japanese history. As what, though? The day democracy's decline became irreversible? Or the day democracy's decline was reversed?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 25, 2015
Growing up to the idea of fighting back
Psychologist Toshio Kawai has an interesting hypothesis. We may, he says in an article written for the Asahi Shimbun's Globe, be entering an age when "becoming an adult will not be necessary."
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jul 18, 2015
Propagating Russian Orthodox faith in Japan
As astonishing as its vigor is the fact that Russia's eastward expansion, beginning in the 16th century, went all but unnoticed, by Japan no less than by Europe.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 11, 2015
Dark humor won't shield us for much longer
'I hope," read an email from a colleague boarding an Osaka-bound shinkansen in Tokyo last week, "nobody sets himself on fire."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 27, 2015
Humans may face a singular concern when it comes to robot employment
The trouble with machines is, they do things better than we do. "Give me a place to stand and I will move the Earth," said the third-century B.C. Greek inventor Archimedes, lever in hand. The Earth has been moving ever since, ever faster.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Jun 20, 2015
Jomon life 'remained pretty much unchanged'
Jomon Japan is fantastic. It ought to be preserved in stone. It was preserved in stone. For 10,000 years, this New Stone Age culture flourished. It is one of the longest-running single traditions in the world. A man, woman or child dying in, say, 10,000 B.C. and coming back to life circa 400 B.C. would...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 13, 2015
Ojika's residents beat the rat race by abandoning it, bucking a national trend in the process
If only there was an island somewhere ...
Philippine bid to acquire used Japanese warships gains steam
Tokyo is looking to transfer Abukuma-class vessels to the Philippines as part of broader efforts to boost the defense capabilities of like-minded neighbors amid growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
Koshien’s dark summer forces reckoning for high school baseball
Koryo High School players greet their cheering section after beating Hokkaido’s Asahikawa Shiho in the first round of Summer Koshien on Aug. 7. The school withdrew three days later as a bullying scandal enveloped the team.
Akazawa's trip to Washington for tariff talks abruptly canceled
Ryosei Akazawa, Japan's chief tariff negotiator, had been set to fly to Washington on Thursday.
Confusion over Japan’s ‘hometown’ plan overshadows African development event
First Lady Yoshiko Ishiba (center, in white and blue dress) hosts an event on Japanese culture with the first ladies of African leaders on the sidelines of the Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama on Aug. 21.
Mitsubishi’s wind-power retreat a blow to Japan's alternative-energy goals
Wind turbines in the town of Happo in Akita prefecture. Wind power is a key part of Japan's alternative energy drive.
Koshien’s dark summer forces reckoning for high school baseball
Koryo High School players greet their cheering section after beating Hokkaido’s Asahikawa Shiho in the first round of Summer Koshien on Aug. 7. The school withdrew three days later as a bullying scandal enveloped the team.
Is Kishida plotting a return of the king? Or would he rather stay a kingmaker?
Former Prime Minister Fumio Kishida chairs a plenary session at the Ninth Tokyo International Conference on African Development in Yokohama on Aug. 21.
Japanese prefectures break with labor ministry on minimum wage
The ministry of labor has suggested a 6% minimum wage increase, but most prefectures reporting so far are opting to go slightly higher.
Philippines quietly deepening ‘unofficial’ defense ties with Taiwan
Filipino soldiers take part in a flag-raising ceremony on Mavulis Island during a visit by the Philippines' Armed Forces chief of staff, in Batanes, the Philippines, in June 2023. Batanes, a group of idyllic islands at the country’s northernmost tip, sits about 160 kilometers from Taiwan.
Are 'coolcations' the answer for Japan's heat-weary tourists?
Hikers on a trail in Hakuba, Nagano Prefecture. As extreme heat continues to grip Japan, a tectonic shift may be underway in the nation’s summer tourism scene as more people gravitate toward cooler destinations.

Podcast

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

Longform

Tetsuzo Shiraishi, speaking at The Center of the Tokyo Raids and War Damage, uses a thermos to explain how he experienced the U.S. firebombing of March 1945, when he was just 7 years old.
From ashes to high-rises: A survivor’s account of Tokyo’s postwar past
By Alex K.T. Martin

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