Ryo Tatsuki, who published ‘The Future I Saw’ in 1999. It warned of a major disaster in March 2011 – a date that indeed coincided with a huge earthquake in Japan that caused a devastating tsunami
Holiday bookings have dipped sharply in one part of the world as some fear a comic book’s predictions could come true.
While speculation found in the pages of a manga comic may not sound like the kind of thing to have real-world consequences, it certainly has in one country. And that impact is set to intensify.
A recent spate of so-called earthquake-related “predictions” has led to a number of travellers in east Asia to cancel or delay their holidays, CNN Travel reports.
Fear of a “big one” in Japan has been mounting for years. The country sits on a seismic fault line and is no stranger to tremors. In fact, the country experiences around 1,500 noticeable earthquakes each year, according to the EarthScope Consortium and JRailPass.com. These earthquakes occur daily, though many are too small to be felt.
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The most recent major earthquake in Japan was the 2011 Tōhoku Earthquake, which hit on March 11, 2011 with a 9.0 magnitude force. It caused a massive tsunami that claimed thousands of lives and led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
Given that context, anxiety about a similar event seems understandable.
Particularly for those who read the work of manga artist Ryo Tatsuki, who published ‘The Future I Saw’ in 1999. It warned of a major disaster in March 2011 – a date that indeed coincided with a huge earthquake.
Four years ago Tatsuki published an updated version of the work which predicted another earthquake, this one in July 2025. At the same time, physics in the country and over in Honh Kong have begun to make similar predictions.
Seismologists find it hard enough to predict earthquakes with any real accuracy, let alone comic book artists and soothsayers. Yet the warnings are not being ignored.
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CN Yuen, managing director of WWPKG, a travel agency based in Hong Kong, told CNN that bookings to Japan dropped by half during the Easter holiday. They are expected to dip further in the coming two months. Visitors from China and Hong Kong, which are Japan’s second and fourth biggest source of tourists, have dropped significantly. In Thailand and Vietnam posts online warning of earthquake danger have been gaining traction.
The impact of her latest prediction is also being felt in South Korea and Taiwan, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. It used ForwardKeys data to gauge the impact on airline bookings and found that average bookings from Hong Kong were down 50% year-on-year. Flights between late June and early July had plummeted by as much as 83%.
“We expected around 80% of the seats to be taken, but actual reservations came to only 40%,” Hiroki Ito, the general manager of the airline’s Japan office, told the Asahi Shimbun following the sharp dip in travel over Easter.
“The quake speculations are definitely having a negative impact on Japan tourism and it will slow the boom temporarily,” said Eric Zhu, Bloomberg Intelligence’s analyst for aviation and defense. “Travelers are taking a risk-adverse approach given the plethora of other short-haul options in the region.”
As a result of her late 90s predictions, Tatsuki has become a famous figure in Japan, selling 900,000 copies of that coming alone. Some claim she also forsaw the deaths of Princess Diana and singer Freddie Mercury, and the Covid-19 pandemic.
Others argue that her predictions are too vague and should not be taken seriously, especially when it comes to a subject as serious and deadly as natural disasters.