In 1999, a manga predicted that Japan would suffer a great cataclysm in 2025. And now there are tourists canceling their trips

Samantha Tang is a yoga teacher, is 34 years old, resides in Hong Kong and is in love with Japan. So much so that since the Pandemia ended, he tries to visit the country once a year. Until recently, August was planned on the beaches of Wakayama80 km from Osaka. “I had,” in the past. Despite his passion for Japanese culture, Tang has recognized the CNN that he will postpone his plans for a peculiar reason: “Everyone talks about an earthquake.” Your case is not unique. Japan has found that a surprising number of tourists are canceling their trips to the country for fear of suffering a natural disaster.

The most curious thing is not that “frightened” of tourists, but what has unleashed it. Behind psychosis is not the government, a seismological organism, a team of physicists and geologists or a revolution, but a manga comic.

THE KEY: A 1999 comic. If Tang has rethink his next trip to Japan, just like others Assiduous and passionate travelers of Japanese culture is largely by a comic released a few years ago. To understand it you have to go back to 1999, when Ryo Tatsuki published ‘WATHI GA MITA MIRAI’ (‘The future I saw’), a manga in which the author talks about prophetic dreams.

The work could pass without sorrow or glory through the libraries of the country if it were not because in it Tatsuki predicted a great disaster that would occur in March 2011, month and year in which Japan suffered A great earthquake With thousands of dead and injured. That coincidence gave a huge reputation to the comic. He began to talk about him on social networks, he commented on TV programs and his specimens were revalued.

And why does it matter now? The work ended up becoming so famous that the Asta Shinsha publishing house signed Tatsuki to publish a new version, a “complete edition” that was launched in 2021 and ended up becoming a bombing. The company ensures that in total more than 960,000 copies. The book has also been published in Chino and has reached other points in Asia in which it has become popular, such as Thailand or Hong Kong. The point is that this new enlarged version includes a prediction that has shaken Japanese tourism and has put on guard not a few travelers in Asia, especially superstitious.

2025. The comic ensures that “the real disaster will arrive in July 2025” (an idea that includes on its own cover) and leaves Sound passages as the following: “I dreamed with a great disaster. The waters of the Pacific Ocean south of the Japanese archipelago will rise.” Such prophecy (of course) has no scientific support and the author herself has recognized in An interview with Mainichi Shimbun that people should act “taking into account the opinion of experts”; But that has not avoided that the influence of manga (and its prophecy) has spread.

A manga … And something else. Although Tatsuki’s comic has played a decisive role is not the only thing that explains that the fear of a natural disaster has downed (and remote) apart from tourists who planned to travel to Japan this year. The ball has been enlarged after an alleged “psychic” Japanese predicted that an earthquake would hit Tokyo’s bay April 26 (something that obviously did not happen) and Qi Xian Yua Feng Shui teacher with some impact on Hongkonese TV, will advise people to stay away from Japan.

If that is added the social networks speaker, the result that I commented Tang With the CNN: “Everyone talks a lot about an earthquake.” “It is better to avoid it. It will be very problematic if an earthquake occurs,” coincides Oscar Chu, another Hong Kong traveler, who usually visits the country of the rising sun several times a year but has decided to rethink his 2025 trip.

Beyond the prophecies. Predictions and prophecies on the margin, the truth is that Japan is located in an area of ​​special seismic activity, the Fire belt Del Pacífico, already throughout the last decades, has suffered earthquakes such as the one that hit the Kanto region in September 1923, the 1995 Hanshin-Awaji, Iwate-Miyagi Nairiku (2008) or that of 2011, which caused damage mainly at the northern end of the country. At the beginning From this same year he suffered another in the southwest area, although with a rather lower intensity, of magnitude 6.9.

Not long ago Japan issued Another alert and the government He has recognized that there is a high probability that an earthquake shakes the Nankai pit (located to the south of the country) throughout the next three decades. TO mid -April Even the Chinese embassy encouraged its travelers to take precautions. Reality, like They recognize the authorities Japanese, is that “with current knowledge it is difficult to predict an earthquake specifying date, time and place.”

How has it affected tourism? Although it is difficult to anticipate the Ladies, the fear climate largely fed by the Tatsuki comic, it is being felt in the Japanese tourism sector. Especially in demand from other points in Asia, such as China, Thailand or Vietnam, important markets for the country. WWPKG travel agency, based in Hong Kong, He has assured to the CNN that the reservations to visit Japan during Holy Week fell to half. And forecasts for the coming months are not better.

Greater Bay Airlines, an Hong Kong airline, He has chosen directly For reducing their services with the Japanese region of Sendai and the city of Tokushima, cutting both in a weekly frequency. The reason: a drop in demand between rumors of an upcoming disaster in Japan that add to the economic uncertainty generated by the tariff war initiated by the United States.

A BOOM SECTOR. The big background question is how this suspicion will affect the growing tourism sector of Japan, which has been moving in historical figures and has even generated tensions in the busiest points, such as the surroundings of the Mount Fuji or the Callejones de las Geishas of Kyoto.

In 2024 the country achieved a record of 36 million of foreign visitors and throughout the first three months of 2025 exceeded the 10.5 millionwhich leads some experts to think that it will reach 40 million this year. With these figures there are those who questions that the effect of prophecies can pass a real invoice to the sector. Only in March they visited the country around 343,000 US touriststo which about 68,000 Canadians and another 85,000 Australians are added.

Image | Geoff Henson (Flickr)

In Xataka | Japan had used its rice reserve against earthquakes or tsunamis. Now is your weapon against the price escalation