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\n As powerful waves surged across the vast Pacific on Wednesday, people around the world remained glued to their phones, tracking the tsunami\u2019s fast progress.\n <\/p>\n
\n But in China, more than a million people were searching for an unusual term: \u201cProphecy.\u201d\n <\/p>\n
\n That\u2019s because, for some, the natural disaster had seemingly been foretold four years earlier, in a Japanese manga comic book.\n <\/p>\n
\n Published in 2021 by artist Ryo Tatsuki \u2013 whose fans say her earlier works have been similarly prophetic \u2013 the manga claimed that the next big earthquake would hit this July, sparking a flurry of viral internet memes and debates across much of Asia in recent months.\n <\/p>\n
\n In China, a search term related to Tatsuki\u2019s so-called \u201cprophecy\u201d gained more than 1.1 million views on the video app Douyin in the immediate aftermath of Wednesday\u2019s Pacific tsunami.\n <\/p>\n
\n \u201cWill Ryo Tatsuki\u2019s prediction of a major disaster in July come true?\u201d ran the headline of a Wednesday article in a Hong Kong newspaper.\n <\/p>\n
\n The manga has had an avid following since its publication in 2021. But it became a cultural phenomenon throughout much of Asia earlier this year as fans anticipated the coming of the author\u2019s apparent prediction, spooking travelers so much that many even canceled summer trips<\/a> to Japan.\n <\/p>\n \n Among tourists, some are relieved and ready to return after Wednesday\u2019s events caused minimal damage. But others remain on edge, resolved to stay away for now.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m getting goosebumps!\u201d wrote one Japanese user on X following the massive 8.8 quake.\n <\/p>\n \n Chinese traveler Andrea Wang, 25, had canceled an April trip to Japan, saying the manga made her \u201cconcerned about the risk to my life.\u201d Though the tsunami has now passed, she still doesn\u2019t plan to travel to Japan for the rest of 2025, she told CNN on Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n It is impossible<\/a> to accurately project in advance when an earthquake might strike, and seismologists have strongly cautioned against believing the rising number of so-called predictions. Even Tatsuki herself urged people not to be \u201coverly swayed\u201d by her dreams, in an interview with Japanese media in May.\n <\/p>\n \n But the prevalence of the debate proves the manga\u2019s tight grip on the popular imagination \u2013 amplified by both soothsayers across Asia and social media \u2013 especially in seismically active Japan, where the constant threat of an earthquake or tsunami looms large in the popular imagination.\n <\/p>\n \n Many still bear the scars of the 2011 Tohoku disaster, when an earthquake triggered devastating tsunami waves that caused the Fukushima nuclear meltdown. The disaster left more than 22,000 dead or missing \u2013 and has since become embedded in the national psyche, with Japanese toddlers doing earthquake drills from the time they can walk, and the government regularly warning of an impending, once-in-a-century earthquake.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n Tatsuki\u2019s manga depicts a cartoon version of herself gleaning visions from her slumbers, some of which turn out to bear close resemblance to real-life events. Some fans believe she predicted the deaths of Princess Diana and Freddie Mercury, though skeptics say her visions are too vague to be taken seriously.\n <\/p>\n \n It was the 2011 quake that boosted belief in Tatsuki\u2019s supposed prescience. Her 1999 manga \u201cThe Future I Saw\u201d has the words \u201cmassive disaster in March, 2011\u201d on the cover \u2013 leading many to believe that she predicted the 9.0 magnitude earthquake<\/a> more than a decade before it hit Tohoku.\n <\/p>\n \n In her 2021 follow-up, Tatsuki warned that an earthquake in the Philippine Sea on July 5 this year would cause tsunami waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake \u2013 leading many to fear disaster sometime last month.\n <\/p>\n \n In the end, Wednesday\u2019s quake struck thousands of kilometers from the predicted epicenter, and the highest waves recorded in Japan measured only 4.3 feet \u2013 far below the 30-foot waves seen in 2011.\n <\/p>\n \n But many travelers, like Wang, decided not to take the chance and canceled their trips to Japan in the last few months, pointing to similar warnings from psychics<\/a> in Japan and Hong Kong.\n <\/p>\n \n CN Yuen, managing director of Hong Kong-based travel agency WWPKG, said the number of bookings for Japan tours fell about 70% in June and July, compared with the same time last year.\n <\/p>\n \n Oscar Chu, a 36-year-old traveler from Hong Kong, also decided not to go earlier this summer, despite usually visiting Japan multiple times a year. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t say I was 100% certain (about the prediction), but I wouldn\u2019t write off the possibility,\u201d he told CNN on Friday.\n <\/p>\n \n When July 5 passed with no incident, some of his friends booked flights to Japan the very next day, he said.\n <\/p>\n \n He\u2019ll head there himself in a few weeks, having coincidentally bought tickets on Wednesday morning \u2013 just before receiving news of the tsunami. But he still plans to go; \u201cYou can\u2019t avoid going for a lifetime,\u201d he said.\n <\/p>\n \n Not everybody is reassured, however. Some of Chu\u2019s friends, who love visiting Japan as much as he does, are taking precautions like avoiding coastal areas or skipping the beach.\n <\/p>\n \n They\u2019re not the only ones wary of a \u201cbig one\u201d on the horizon. Wednesday\u2019s tsunami highlighted the vulnerability for millions living on coastlines all around the Pacific, where the seismically active \u201cRing of Fire\u201d has produced many of the world\u2019s strongest earthquake.\n <\/p>\n \n Fears in Japan have been mounting since the government\u2019s recent warnings that a massive quake could hit the southern Nankai Trough within the next 30 years \u2013 though the science remains disputed.\n <\/p>\n \n The Nankai Trough is a 700-kilometer-long (435-mile) subduction zone, where one tectonic plate slips beneath another. Along this fault, severe earthquakes have been recorded every 100 to 200 years, according to the Japanese government\u2019s Earthquake Research Committee.\n <\/p>\n \n The last such quakes took place in 1944 and 1946, killing at least 2,500 people and destroying tens of thousands of homes.\n <\/p>\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/whatsapp-image-2025-05-08-at-10-34-15.jpg\")
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