On Saturday, the Japanese government cautioned that more strong earthquakes could occur in the waters southwest of its main islands. Authorities emphasized the need for the public to ignore baseless predictions of an impending major disaster.
In response to a 5.5-magnitude quake that struck near Kyushu’s southernmost tip on Thursday, officials evacuated several residents from nearby remote islands. This tremor was part of a series of over 1,000 earthquakes recorded in Kagoshima prefecture over the past two weeks, which fueled rampant speculation linked to a comic book that allegedly forecasts a significant disaster in Japan this month.
Ayataka Ebita, head of the Japan Meteorological Agency’s earthquake and tsunami monitoring division, stated, “With our current scientific knowledge, it’s difficult to predict the exact time, place or scale of an earthquake,” following another shake of 5.4-magnitude in the region on Saturday. He urged the public to rely on scientific data, saying, “We ask that people base their understanding on scientific evidence.”
The manga in question has led to a decrease in tourism, with arrivals from Hong Kong dropping by 11% in May compared to the previous year, as rumors gained traction. However, Japan has witnessed record tourism this year, with April achieving a monthly high of 3.9 million visitors.
Ryo Tatsuki, the artist behind “The Future I Saw,” which was first published in 1999 and re-released in 2021, stated in a message via her publisher, “I am not a prophet.”
Given Japan’s status as one of the most seismically active regions globally, it experiences about 20% of the world’s earthquakes measuring magnitude 6 or higher.
