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Gearoid Reidy

Gearoid Reidy

The Japan Times

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Is this the end for Japan’s iconic Studio Ghibli?

In the end, even the most iconic of Japanese artisans have to bow to demographics. The announcement that Studio Ghibli, the famed animation studio...

friday 40

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

As goes the Sogo department store, so goes Japan

Shopping might be the most capitalist of all activities. Little wonder, then, that where we shop reflects capitalism back to us, capturing the...

friday 60

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

The complex legacy of ‘Lost in Translation,’ 20 years on

It has been 20 years since an aging Bill Murray and a young Scarlett Johansson introduced Tokyo to a generation in Sofia Coppola’s "Lost in...

13.09.2023 90

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

A 10-year tourist boom and all I got was this lousy 'Mario Kart'

They’re the scourge of Tokyo’s streets: bright-red go-karts, driven by foreign tourists waving and clad in cartoon costumes. The providers of...

06.09.2023 100

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Tokyo has lived on the brink of the ‘big one’ — for a century

A hundred years ago this month, Tokyo was flattened. The Great Kanto Earthquake, a magnitude 7.9 event, demolished the nascent Japanese capital,...

04.09.2023 100

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

'Japanification' for China? It should be so lucky.

The world is finally awakening to challenges that have been building in China for years. That means it’s open season among the commentariat on the...

30.08.2023 100

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Japan has a misery-loves-company problem

For a group of Japanese politicians, what was meant to be a moment of frivolity in France has become a grievous faux pas. At first blush, a photo in...

17.08.2023 90

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Japan is bringing in more foreign nationals than you think

New statistics regularly pop up to illustrate the accelerating decline of Japan’s population. Just the other week, the first-ever drop of locals in...

11.08.2023 90

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

'Oppenheimer' spurs debate on the atomic bombings

What can we learn from a country’s choice of when — or whether — to screen World War II drama "Oppenheimer"? Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster...

28.07.2023 50

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Tokyo's tree-razing drama shouldn't stymie transformation

In a city that is constantly changing, some residents are pushing back. Plans to redevelop Jingu Gaien, a century-old park and sports center in...

28.07.2023 20

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Tokyo’s tree-razing drama shouldn’t stymie transformation

In a city that is constantly changing, some residents are pushing back. Plans to redevelop Jingu Gaien, a century-old park and sports center in...

26.07.2023 20

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Fukushima water opposition is steeped in anti-science

Bloomberg – Hong Kong is so opposed to Japan’s plan to release treated water from the Fukushima nuclear plant that it’s banning seafood products...

20.07.2023 20

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Rakuten is hanging on. It should consider hanging up.

Next month, Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Mikitani will take the stage at the Rakuten Optimism conference, his e-commerce firm’s biggest event of the...

14.07.2023 100

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

The Land of the Rising Sun rises much too early

The sun pierces through the curtains. Birds are chirping. The thermometer nears 30 degrees Celsius (86F). It’s not yet 5 a.m. It’s a pretty...

05.07.2023 100

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

In pursuing peace, Japan’s leader must also prepare for war

Taking place in the first city to suffer an atomic bombing, this weekend’s Group of Seven summit has a certain poetry. The choice of Hiroshima as...

17.05.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

How Fumio Kishida was able to get his groove back

It turns out it might be worth remembering his name after all. The international scorn over how rapidly Japan changes leaders had led some to wonder...

10.05.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Buffett and other billionaires say Tokyo is worth revisiting

Tokyo has struggled for years to pitch itself again as a major financial hub, but its ambitions might be saved by what Homer Simpson once called the...

26.04.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Don’t allow the attack on Kishida to become a trend

What looked to be a once-in-a-generation event threatens to become a new trend. When Shinzo Abe, Japan’s longest-serving prime minister, was...

16.04.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Move over ‘Minions,’ it’s Mario time at the movies

At the height of his fame in the early 1990s, Nintendo’s iconic Super Mario was, according to one widely cited survey, more recognizable to U.S....

12.04.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Japan wants wage winners. Is it ready for losers?

The slogan used by the Japan Council of Metalworkers’ Unions sums it up: “Secure Jobs for a Secure Future.” Throughout the country, talk and...

29.03.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

WBC baseball victory is a triumph for Japan’s soft power

The past 30 years in Japan is often painted as a period of stagnation, decline and waning international influence. But sport is one major exception as...

23.03.2023 40

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

The cherry blossoms are back, but is Tokyo?

Tokyoites are getting back into a pre-COVID-19 tradition. This month sees the return of hanami, the cherry-blossom viewing parties that are part of a...

19.03.2023 40

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Somewhere in the multiverse, SVB could be the BOJ

If the multiverse of Academy Award sensation “Everything Everywhere All at Once” exists, then in some alternate reality this scenario unfolded...

16.03.2023 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Squaring the circle of same-sex marriage in Japan

Japan doesn’t tend to do social change quickly — or in public. It’s all the more unusual a recent confluence of events that has brought a...

15.03.2023 30

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Quakes are inevitable. Huge death tolls are not.

Earthquakes can neither be prevented nor predicted. If a Category 5 typhoon nears, evacuations are possible; there can be time to move to a safe zone...

01.03.2023 20

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Can money turn the tide on global fertility rates?

Japan says it’s the last chance to reverse the trend of its declining birthrate. The poster child for aging society is nearing a “whatever it...

22.02.2023 40

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Begging Japanese companies to hike wages is not the answer

Inflation is the modern era’s “Black Ships” that forced Japan to open trade with the U.S. 170 years ago, according to the head of the...

27.01.2023 30

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

The growing comprehension gap that isolates Japan

The Bank of Japan did exactly what it said it would do: nothing. Yet traders were stunned. The market churn after the Jan. 18 decision to keep policy...

25.01.2023 20

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Japan’s standing is rising, but not so for its leader

When Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visits the White House Friday, he’ll be doing so at a time when his country has rarely been so important...

13.01.2023 30

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Don’t pay people to leave Tokyo. Make more Tokyos.

How much would you accept to leave one of the world’s greatest cities? Japan is offering families in Tokyo ¥1 million ($7,640) per child to depart...

09.01.2023 30

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

‘Avatar’ struggles show how Japan is ditching Hollywood

In its economic heyday of the late 1980s and early 1990s, there was a curious phenomenon of Hollywood celebrities showing up in Japanese commercials:...

30.12.2022 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

Haruhiko Kuroda spent 2022 showing the courage to be disliked

Long a master of theatrics and timing, Haruhiko Kuroda spent 2022 making everyone upset — even before his pre-Christmas cracker of an announcement,...

28.12.2022 10

The Japan Times

Gearoid Reidy

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