July 2025 Japan megaquake prophecy
From the end of 2024, a rumor began that a great earthquake would occur in Japan in July 2025, based on a purported prophecy in the 1999 manga The Future I Saw by Ryo Tatsuki. Its spread in several Asian countries resulted in a notable decline in holiday travel to Japan. Seismologists discounted the prediction.
Background
The Future I Saw is a manga written by Ryo Tatsuki and first published by Asahi Sonorama in 1999. It is presented as a diary of the author's dreams. While some media noted the manga after the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, when Tatsuki received messages noting that a diary entry illustrated on the manga's cover had predicted a disaster in March 2011, it didn't have noticeable attention at the time. Tatsuki had already forgotten about the text by that time.A reprinted version was published by Asuka Shinsha in October 2020, whereupon the out-of-print edition received renewed attention; what was now a pop culture artifact eventually reached a price of up to 500,000 yen. Such was its fame that a Tatsuki impersonator of began making false claims in interviews and magazines such as having had predicted the Great Hanshin earthquake and the death of Ozaki Yutaka. The impersonator eventually claimed that Mount Fuji would erupt in August, which did not happen.
It was during this period that the Japanese TV show Unbelievable began making dramas of mysterious experiences published by Asuka Shinsha. Tatsuki contacted the publisher, and a new, expanded verson was published on October 1, 2021. The reprint became the best-selling book weekly in Japan on May 13, 2025.
The reprints included the text "The real disaster will strike in July 2025" from another of Tatsuki's dreams, with Tatsuki claiming that said event would be a massive fissure opening in the Philippine Sea, causing a tsunami "three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake" that would destroy Japan.
Impact
An opinion poll conducted by Sky Perfect JSAT in June 2025 showed that 49.4% of the Japanese public had heard rumors of the prophecy.The number of videos discussing the prophecy started to rise around 2023 and began spreading in the Sinophone world, particularly in Hong Kong and Taiwan. The resulting notable decline in holiday bookings to Japan forced Greater Bay Airlines to reduce the number of flights to Sendai Airport and Tokushima Airport; Hong Kong Airlines went so far as to shut down flights to Sendai completely as of May 31. According to Bloomberg, bookings from Hong Kong were down 50% from their annual median, with those from late June and early July down as much as 83%.
The rumor had become a viral phenomenon having spread to the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam. Flight ticket prices in Korea dropped below 100,000 won in June 2025. Posts concerning and warning of traveling to Japan were "overflowing" on social media in Thailand and Vietnam, and a cancellation wave was found in the Philippines. Singaporean tourists, on the other hand, were unfazed by the prophecy; the number of orders to Japan on both Trip.com and Traveloka did not decrease.
The economic impact was such that it came to the attention of the Anglosphere in late May, with coverage from The Guardian, CNN, etc., and the Francophonie on 30 June, with coverage from Le Monde.
July 2025
From June 25 to July 4, a total of 1,198 earthquakes occurred near the Tokara Islands in far southwest Japan. The largest of these, on July 4, was at the lower end of 6 on the Japan Meteorological Agency seismic intensity scale. This earthquake swarm was the most intense in the region since 1995. 31 residents requested evacuation to Mainland Japan following several earthquakes of 5+ on the JMA scale, i.e. approximately VII on the Mercalli scale This series of earthquakes were eventually connected to the rumors of disasters in July.On July 5, 2025, when the prophecy didn't come true, the entry "Nothing happened in Japan" became the first trend on Sina Weibo.
A large earthquake did happen, however, but much later in the month, on July 30, and from a different location; tsunami waves associated with the 2025 Kamchatka earthquake off the Eastern coast of Russia impacted the region of Hokkaido at 10:40 am JST. The event sparked some renewed interest in the manga, although Tatsuki herself had previously advised "Don't be overly swayed by my dreams."
Reactions
Fact-check columns on Rappler and the Mainichi Shimbun both stated that scientists cannot predict where and when earthquakes and tsunamis will strike. The Japan Meteorological Agency described accurate prediction of earthquakes as a "hoax". Shengji Wei, Assistant Professor of Asian School of the Environment at Nanyang Technological University, indicated that predicting earthquakes accurately is impossible with current technology.Ayaka Ebita, director of the Earthquake and Tsunami Observations Division in Japan Meteorological Agency, responded that earthquakes were "totally coincidental" with the prophecy on July 5 given the geologic conditions of Japan, and urged people to "base their judgment on science".
Huang Hsin-Hua, associate research fellow of the Institute of Earth Sciences in Academia Sinica, noted that earthquakes occur at the boundaries of plates. For earthquakes to occur at the center of a plate, as the book suggested, does not match the current scientific evidence.