Tokyo — Japan’s tourism industry is grappling with a surprising challenge this summer: widespread panic over a predicted earthquake, driven by an old manga and intensified by social media rumors.
At the center of the storm is The Future I Saw (Watashi ga Mita Mirai), a comic book by Japanese illustrator Ryo Tatsuki. The manga, first published in 1999 and republished in 2021, claims to document the author’s prophetic dreams. Among them is a prediction of a massive earthquake and tsunami hitting Japan on July 5, 2025, an event that has now gone viral across Asia.
The book gained cult-like attention after readers pointed out that it had seemingly predicted the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, which killed over 15,000 people and triggered a nuclear disaster in Fukushima. While scientists have dismissed such predictions as coincidence, this particular claim has become a focal point for doomsday speculation online.
The fears have been amplified by popular influencers, TikTok users, and even feng shui masters in Hong Kong, many of whom have warned their followers against traveling to Japan this July. As a result, travel agencies across the region have reported mass cancellations and a sharp decline in interest for Japan-bound trips during the early summer.
According to South China Morning Post and Japan Forward, several Hong Kong-based travel firms have seen a 70–80% drop in bookings for July trips to Japan, especially to destinations like Sendai and Tokushima. Greater Bay Airlines has reportedly reduced the number of flights on routes between Hong Kong and Japan due to low demand.
Despite the panic, Japan’s Meteorological Agency and several seismology experts have reiterated that there is no scientific method to predict the exact timing of earthquakes, and that such claims are not based on verified data.
“While we always advise earthquake preparedness, predicting a quake to the exact date is not scientifically possible,” the agency said in a statement.
Japan’s government has not issued any travel alerts related to the manga prophecy but is closely monitoring the situation as it affects inbound tourism. With Japan welcoming over 3 million foreign tourists in March 2025 alone, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization, industry stakeholders fear that continued misinformation could harm what has been a steady post-pandemic tourism recovery.
As July approaches, many observers hope that reason will prevail over superstition. But for now, a decades-old manga and a viral wave of fear are enough to shake the travel plans of thousands.
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