author

 
Menu
Search
 
August 29, 2025
 

Today's print edition

Home Delivery
Subscribe for more access
Michael Hoffman

Meta

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 / History / THE LIVING PAST
Dec 20, 2014
Christian missionaries find Japan a tough nut to crack
My local supermarket plays Christmas music. Yours probably does too. My neighbors have Christmas trees. So do yours, no doubt. At this time of year, in the major cities if not nationwide, you might almost think you were in a Christian country.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Dec 13, 2014
Generations square off in a battle for the ages
You'd think they owned the planet. They think they do — pushing into line at supermarkets, hogging seats on trains, generally behaving as though no one but themselves existed except to provide the services they need.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 29, 2014
Debating milk, names and workplace blues
Milk — liquid innocence. If milk lets you down, what won't? It looks healthy, tastes healthy — surely it is healthy? Appearances, we know, are deceiving; still, this particular illusion dies hard.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 22, 2014
Is happiness worth the risk of addiction?
You'll have heard this story before, in one form or another. "Mr. B," 66, is a pachinko addict. Hard core.
Japan Times
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Nov 15, 2014
Laughter the best medicine for humanity
What a comical species we are. The proof? Laughter. We laugh. At what? Why?
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Nov 8, 2014
Determining good and evil, with the kids
What is "moral education"?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Nov 8, 2014
Zen and Japanese Culture
This is one of those books you read to the last page without ever finishing; you keep going back for more — and finding it.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 25, 2014
The romantic notion of rural relocation
Yu Iwamoto began adult life working in the slums, refugee camps and precarious schools of Afghanistan. Had he even heard, back then, of the Oki Islands off the coast of Shimane Prefecture?
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Oct 18, 2014
From Race to Ethnicity
The first known Japanese in Hawaii were shipwrecked fishermen circa 1806, unwitting forerunners of a diaspora they can scarcely have imagined.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Oct 18, 2014
Getting to the heart of Murasaki's 'Tale of Genji'
"If any society in the world can be described as unique," wrote historian Ivan Morris, "it is that of Heian Kyo in the time of Murasaki Shikibu."
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Oct 11, 2014
The horrific act that connects Islamic State to a few Japanese schoolchildren
Beheadings. Dismemberings. The world is turning into a horror movie.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 27, 2014
Tales from the city show cracks in the system
Why are people unhappy? Think back to just about any historical period you like, from the remote past to times within living memory; imagine people then looking at us now and saying, "How dare you be unhappy? You haven't earned the right!"
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books / ESSENTIAL READING FOR JAPANOPHILES
Sep 27, 2014
Japan — A short Cultural History
If there's room in your life for just one general history of Japan, let this be the one. In the hands of a master, history becomes art. British scholar-diplomat Sir George Bailey Sansom (1883-1965) was such a master.
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Sep 20, 2014
Can simplicity survive contact with complexity?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Sep 13, 2014
Women express pride in remaining a virgin
"The pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable."
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Sep 6, 2014
The Journey
On most lists of great 20th-century Japanese writers, Jiro Osaragi's name does not figure. He was popular and respected in his own day (1898-1973), mostly as a writer of historical fiction, but literary immortality has eluded him. So?
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 30, 2014
Tokyo's robotic eyes are everywhere
You are not alone.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 23, 2014
The well-off families who are feeling unwell
We're not living right. It's obvious, though whose fault it is may not be, and what to do about it is certainly not.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Aug 16, 2014
The Nobility of Failure
Who hasn't at one time or another suspected that failure is nobler than success? Here the late British historian Ivan Morris celebrates Japanese heroes who refused to make the tawdry compromises success all too often demands. They fail, but fail gloriously, reaping the posthumous reward of deathless...
JAPAN / History / THE LIVING PAST
Aug 16, 2014
The awakening of a nation permanently at peace
There's something to be said for national isolation. Peace, for example. The very few foreigners allowed into Japan during its 250-odd years of almost total seclusion, from the early 17th century to the mid-19th, were awed by the spectacle of a nation permanently at peace.
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

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027
Looking ahead to Yokohama’s Green × Expo 2027

SPECIAL SUPPLEMENTS note

Read more

SUPPLEMENTS BINDER