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:
"Some say that though Kobo Daishi (Kukai) left this life he did not die, that he lies uncorrupted in (his tomb on Mount Koya) under these ancient trees, awaiting the coming of the future Buddha who will signal the salvation of the world" — ...
Sleep. Those to whom it comes effortlessly can't imagine the yearning it inspires. The more you yearn for it, the further it recedes. The further it recedes, the more you yearn for it. It becomes everything in life. All other goals pale beside it. Oh, ...
The girl was 15, the teacher in his early 30s. He recognized her ability, encouraged her, befriended her, seduced her. He took her to a love hotel and said, "This is what grown-ups do." The story appeared in the Asahi Shimbun last month in a ...
Life is tragic, life is comic; the glass is half-empty — no, half full. Point of view is all. Two magazines — President and Spa — represent the opposite poles of optimism and pessimism. For President, bad luck and good luck are all in ...
If the year-end seems less festive than foreboding, escape through the poems of the "Koshinsu," Japan's earliest poetic anthologies.
The world is furious. From Hong Kong to Chile, Indonesia to Bolivia, France to Iraq, Haiti to Iran, Egypt to Peru, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, have declared war on their governments and social systems, decrying dictatorship, corruption, mismanagement, incompetence, inequality, numbness to ...
The BBC in October published a glowing encomium to Japanese cleanliness. "How," it asks, "does Japan stay so clean?" It's deeply ingrained, the report explains. Shinto purifies the body, Buddhism cleanses the mind, the tea ceremony sweeps the last speck of dust from the rustic ...
Why do the sun and the moon see so little of each other? Their quarrel, explains the eighth-century chronicle "Nihon Shoki," was one between siblings. Amaterasu, the sun goddess, was born of their father's left eye; Tsukiyomi, the moon god, of his right eye. ...
'Comparison is a very foolish attitude," said Indian mystic Chandra Mohan Jain, popularly known as Osho (1931-90), "because each person is unique and incomparable. Once this understanding settles in you, jealousy disappears." It may be true, but the fact seems to be that "this understanding ...
How we hate each other. The pertinent Japanese word is kireru, suggestive of a sudden outburst of uncontrollable rage. The Asahi Shimbun last month described a kireyasui shakai (a society in which it's easy to lose your temper). Surveying 1,586 individuals at random, it found ...
