A Prophesied Disaster (Likely) Won't Strike Japan This Weekend

In all probability, the much-feared Nankai quake won't happen on July 5, but it will happen sometime. That's a warning we should all heed.

- Gearoid Reidy

Life as we know it will probably not come to an end in Japan this weekend. But what if it does? That's the question consuming a disaster-prone country ahead of a widely spread prediction of disaster that one comic book suggests will occur on July 5.

Watashi Ga Mita Mirai (The Future I Saw), a manga by Ryo Tatsuki about her purported ability to see the future in dreams, was first published in 1999. It would have faded into obscurity but for the mention of a tsunami, and the cover that read "Major disaster in March 2011". Years later, when the most powerful earthquake to hit the country struck that very month, triggering a devastating tsunami and the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear meltdown, some hailed the author as a prophet.

In 2021, she released an updated version that included a new prediction of disaster on July 5, 2025, involving a massive eruption in the Philippine Sea that triggers a tsunami striking Japan with waves three times the height of those in 2011.

Such a disaster would obviously be devastating on a human level. But already, the comic has had an economic impact, with some tourists from Hong Kong and elsewhere in Asia shunning trips out of fear. Mr Takahide Kiuchi, executive economist at the Nomura Research Institute, estimates that 560 billion yen ( S$4.97 billion) of economic damage could result if tourists continue to stay away due to this and other projections of doom.