The prophecy of a possible earthquake and tsunami knocked out tourism in Japan

Japan recorded record visitor numbers this year, with April reaching an all-time monthly high of 3.9 million travellers. Yet rumours - which have gone viral - of an impending disaster, stemming from a prediction in a Japanese manga (comic book), have dampened the tourism boom, with some airlines literally cancelling flights from Hong Kong, where passenger numbers plummeted 11% year-on-year in May, according to the latest available figures.

Hong Kong-based tour operators, contacted by Reuters, blamed a flurry of predictions on social media related to a manga entitled Watashi ga mita mirai (which can be translated as 'The Future I Saw') that depicts a dream of a violent earthquake and tsunami that would hit Japan and neighbouring countries this July 2025.

Ryo Tatsuki, the author of the manga first published in 1999 and then republished in 2021, tried to dampen speculation, stating in a statement released by her publisher that she was 'not a prophetess'.

The impact of this comic book is due to the fact that the first edition already announced a major natural disaster in March 2011. That month and year, a violent earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster struck the north-eastern coast of Japan, killing thousands of people and damaging the Fukushima atomic power plant. Some readers, relaying posts that went viral on social networks, interpreted the latest edition as a prediction of a catastrophic event that is expected to occur on 5 July 2025, although Tatsuki denied this.

Located within the Pacific Ocean's 'Ring of Fire', Japan is one of the most seismically active countries in the world. In recent days, more than 900 earthquakes, most of them minor, have occurred on islands off the southern tip of Kyushu.