Viral rumors of imminent disaster derived from a prediction of comics have taken to the brightness of the tourist boom in Japan, and some airlines cancel flights from Hong Kong, where passenger numbers have collapsed.
Japan has seen a record number of visitors this year, with April establishing a monthly maximum of 3.9 million travelers.
However, that fell in May, with the arrivals of Hong Kong, the superstitious city controlled by the Chinese where rumors have circulated widely, 11% per year, according to the latest data.
Steve Huen of the Hong Kong -based travel agency, Egl Tours, blamed a large number of social media predictions linked to a manga that represents a dream of a massive earthquake and Tsunami that arrived in Japan and neighboring countries in July 2025.
“Rumors have had a significant impact,” said Huen, added that his company had seen his business related to Japan in half. The discounts and the introduction of earthquake insurance “prevented trips to Japan to fall to zero,” he added.
Branden Choi, a 28 -year -old Hong Kong resident, said he was a frequent traveler to Japan, but doubted to visit the country during July and August due to manga prediction. “If possible, I could delay my trip and go after September,” he said.
Ryo Tatsuki, the artist behind the manga entitled ‘The future I saw’, first published in 1999 and then relaunched in 2021, has tried to cushion the speculation, saying in a statement issued by her editor that she “was not a prophet.”
The first edition of the manga warned about a great natural disaster in March 2011. That was the month and year when a massive earthquake, Tsunami and nuclear disaster hit the northeast coast of Japan that killed thousands.
Some have interpreted the last edition as predicting that a catastrophic event would occur specifically on July 5, 2025, although Tatsuki has denied it.
Located within the ‘Ring of Fire’ of the Pacific Ocean, Japan is one of the countries most prone to the earthquakes in the world. In recent days there have been more than 900 earthquakes, most of them small tremors, on the islands of the southern end of Kyushu.
But Robert Geller, a professor at the University of Tokyo who studied Seismology since 1971, said that even the prediction of scientist -based earthquakes was “impossible.”
“None of the predictions I have experienced in my scientific career has approached at all,” he said.
However, low -cost carrier Greater Bay Airlines became the last Hong Kong airline on Wednesday to cancel Japan flights due to low demand, saying that he would indefinitely suspend his service to Tokushima in western Japan as of September.
Serena Peng, 30, a visitor to Tokyo from Seattle, initially had tried to convince her husband to visit Japan after seeing the speculation of social networks.
“I’m not very worried at this time, but I was before,” he said, talking outside the bustling Senso-Ji temple of Tokyo.
