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May 17, 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).
For Michael Hoffman's latest contributions to The Japan Times, see below:
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Aug 7, 2011
Man convicted of murder may soon be proved innocent
"Can you imagine how it feels for an innocent man to be kept in prison for years?" demanded Govinda Prasad Mainali during a Japan Times interview in November 2003.
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Aug 1, 2011
Japan finally seems to be shifting from nuclear power
Post-nuclear Japan?
Japan Times
LIFE
Jul 31, 2011
Most unlikely bedfellows
"How wonderful! How marvelous! From here to the southeast is what the Westerners call the Pacific Ocean and the American states! They must be very close!" — Watanabe Kazan, artist and samurai, in a diary recording a sojourn in Enoshima, an island off Kamakura in present-day Kanagawa Prefecture,...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 17, 2011
It seems Japan has literally gone to the dogs
Japan has found an answer to loneliness, despair, fear, disgust and uncertainty. Hint: It's alive, stands on four legs and barks. Well, so much the better if the gloom weighing us down can be so easily dispelled. Or is it?
CULTURE / Books
Jul 10, 2011
Salvation through baffling wisdom
PURIFYING ZEN: Watsuji Tetsuro's Shamon Dogen. Translated by Steve Bein. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011, 174 pp., $24 (paper) Zen is baffling: You find yourself wrestling with thoughts such as "It is easy to grasp body-mind. The world is like rice or flax or bamboo or bulrushes."
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jul 4, 2011
Today's youth have it hard, but is it worse than before?
Young people the world over are stuck with the world as it is, a world they had no hand in making. From the sidelines they blame their elders for this stupidity and that, and vow to do better when their turn comes, only to find, for the most part, that youthful risōshugi (理想主義, idealism)...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jul 3, 2011
Japan needs to do more than simply 'cope' with stress
What's ailing us? The list is long. In a nutshell: stress. Sixty percent of Japan's work force suffers from it, according to the business magazine Weekly Toyo Keizai.
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 19, 2011
Japan's leadership desperately needs some sex appeal
What a pity Aristophanes died c. 388 B.C: That classical Athenian comic playwright knew politics and politicians. They kindled his comic wrath. "O, thou that shavest close thy passionate arse!" he wrote of one politician. Of another: "Noisome was the stench that issued from the brute as it slid forth,...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Jun 6, 2011
What will Japan learn from the Fukushima meltdowns?
Can Japan afford nuclear power? Can Japan afford to dispense with nuclear power? If the answer to both questions is no — as, in the wake of the Fukushima reactor meltdowns, it appears it may be — we are at a fukurokōji (袋小路, impasse). What to do?
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Jun 5, 2011
Sadly, the pleasant diversion of literature is losing its appeal
Radiation and rubble — that's Japan's reality now and for the foreseeable future; the only escape is to seize the bull called "relevance" by the horns and fling it to the devil. Gladly I accept the challenge. If I need an excuse, the bimonthly magazine Brutus provides one. Its June 1 edition, 118...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 22, 2011
Extreme nationalism may emerge from the rubble of the quake
Destruction, when massive but not total, engenders rebirth, or reinvention, or both. Japan after World War II is a prime example, a model from which Japan in the wake of March's earthquake-tsunami-meltdown is sure to draw inspiration.
CULTURE / Books
May 15, 2011
Natsume Soseki: mining a literary treasure
THEORY OF LITERATURE AND OTHER CRITICAL WRITINGS, by Natsume Soseki. Columbia University Press, 2009, 287 pp., $50 (hardcover) Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) is said to rank among the world's great 20th-century writers. Many consider him Japan's greatest modern novelist. His books, from the comic "I...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
May 8, 2011
Checking the time on the Doomsday Clock
In 1902, an American science writer named Robert Kennedy Duncan wrote a magazine piece titled "Radio-Activity: A New Property of Matter." Its subject is French physicist Henri Becquerel's discovery, in 1896, of the rays that now bear his name. Duncan's tone is so radiant with hope, so luminous with the...
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
May 2, 2011
Reading between the lines of disaster vocabulary
If you chanced to visit Tokyo Electric Power Co.'s website in mid-April, you probably saw a note regarding the utility's tsunami e no taisaku (津波への対策, tsunami policy). Clearly it had been written in more innocent times. Relax, it said in effect. The policy was iron-clad. It rested on painstaking...
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 24, 2011
Office ladies, our fresh-faced saviors
Slowly the nation wakes from its nightmare. Tokyo Disneyland reopens. A semblance of normality returns, at least to areas outside the stricken zone.
CULTURE / Books
Apr 17, 2011
Shining a light on Korean sorrow in Japan
INTO THE LIGHT: An Anthology of Literature by Koreans in Japan. Edited by Melissa L. Wender. University of Hawai'i Press, 2011, 226 pp. $22 (paper) The eight stories in this anthology span nearly 60 years, from 1939, when Korea was a resentful and mutinous Japanese colony, to 1997, when South Korea...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 10, 2011
'Kan the Destroyer' needs his fire back
In spring 1997, the American news magazine Time published a special issue titled "The New Japan." The subtitle was "A rising generation of risk-takers and rule-breakers is stirring the country from its slumber."
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Apr 6, 2011
In a catastrophe, chitsujo serves Japan well
Something so immense has befallen Japan that it almost defies contemplation, let alone expression. It is a watershed event, shattering lives and the ground they are lived on; challenging also one of the unspoken (and unproven) assumptions underlying civilized life — that konton (混沌, chaos)...
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Apr 3, 2011
Renewed national pride will shape Japan's future
Spring dawns on a shattered Japan. "Not since World War II" is a recurring phrase, and no wonder. Mass destruction accompanied by radiation — what other analogy is big enough?
LIFE / Language / BILINGUAL
Mar 2, 2011
The language of revolution unspoken in Japan
Mohammed Bouazizi never lived to see the history he made. He was a Tunisian, young, educated and unemployed, and on Dec. 17, out of sheer rage and frustration, he set himself on fire. He died on Jan. 3. He was 26. Tunisia's Jasmine Revolution, seiten no hekireki (晴天の霹靂, a bolt out of the blue,...
Japanese stripper bids to have her porn movies taken off internet
Plaintiff Miyuki Ariga (left) speaks at a news conference along with her lawyer, Yoshitomo Morohashi, after filing a lawsuit at the Tokyo District Court on Monday.
Kishida defends planned rule to revoke foreigners' residency
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida speaks during a meeting of the Lower House Judicial Affairs Committee on Wednesday.
Human bone-like objects found at Nippon Steel plant’s molten iron pot, with one worker missing
Police believe it’s highly possible that human bones found in a molten iron pot at Nippon Steel's Oita factory belong to a missing male employee.
Was Onosato's defeat of Terunofuji an era-defining bout?
Onosato (right) defeats Terunofuji at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo on May 12. While nothing in sumo is guaranteed, it seems almost inevitable that Onosato is destined for the top of the sport's pyramid.
Man suspected of using smart glasses to cheat on Waseda University exams
The Waseda University campus in Tokyo. An 18-year-old male test-taker is suspected of using smart glasses to cheat during the university's entrance exam.
Japanese rap creates its mecca in Pop Yours
Tokyo-based artist Jumadiba says he forgoes the label of simply “rap” for his music because the Japanese rap scene isn’t confined to a particular sound.
Who’s toughest on China? Biden’s tariff tactic ups ante as election looms.
U.S. President Joe Biden speaks about new actions to protect American workers and businesses from China's "unfair" trade practices, in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington on Tuesday.
Was Onosato's defeat of Terunofuji an era-defining bout?
Onosato (right) defeats Terunofuji at the Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo on May 12. While nothing in sumo is guaranteed, it seems almost inevitable that Onosato is destined for the top of the sport's pyramid.
Ishin struggles to set itself apart from other parties
Nippon Ishin no Kai Secretary-General Fumitake Fujita (right) speaks beside Yui Kanazawa, the party's candidate in the Tokyo 15th district by-election on April 28. Nippon Ishin lost in this by-election as well as another in Nagasaki held on the same day.
In Japan, 68,000 people over 65 projected to die alone at home this year
As Japan grapples with its population's rapid aging, supporting people who live and age alone is looming larger on the policy agenda.

Podcast

From easily navigable train stations to the helpfulness of its municipal staff, Tokyo has earned high praise for its commitment to accessibility for disabled travelers.
[Rebroadcast] Japan is doing better on accessibility than you may think

Longform

Things may look perfect to the outside world, but today's mom is fine with some imperfection at home.
How 'Reiwa moms' are reshaping motherhood in Japan
By Mai Yoshikawa

SUSTAINABLE JAPAN

Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there
Vol. 35: Travel in time — and stay there

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