New Delhi: A Japanese manga cartoonist, Ryo Tatsuki, known as the New Baba Vanga, has predicted a catastrophic event in Japan on July 5, 2025, panicking people and causing those not residing there to book travel tickets to leave the country immediately.
Later in the 2021 edition of her book The Future I Saw, Tatsuki chillingly predicts a huge seabed rupture between Japan and the Philippines that will burst, causing tsunamis three times larger than the Tohoku tsunami of 2011. Originally her prophecy was spoken in 1999, but went viral following her accurate foretelling of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, the 1995 Kobe quake, and a global pandemic, which appeared during the Covid-19 pandemic. The earthquake has caused a high level of fear with tourists cancelling or delaying trips to Japan.
Hong Kong-based travel agency WWPKG said it was forced to cut bookings to Japan by half during the April-May 2025 spring holidays as compared to last year. According to Bloomberg Intelligence, flight reservations out of Hong Kong were down 83 percent from late June to the beginning of July. The no-demand factor has prompted HK Airlines to halt operations to the southern cities, such as Kagoshima and Kumamoto, in July and August. In an interview on CNN, CN Yuen, the managing director of WWPKG, stated that travellers are afraid due to the prediction made by Tatsuki and the recent advisories from the Chinese embassy.
The situation was compounded by anxiety created by a call from the Chinese embassy in Tokyo telling people to watch out for natural calamities in April 2025. Social media networks, including X, are filled with hashtags like #July2025Prediction; some users are posting their evacuation plans while others dismiss the predictions as unscientific. The Meteorological Agency in Japan has not issued special warnings for July, stating that no credible data supports such predictions.
Despite Tatsuki’s advice to not give her predictions much credence, the phobia has significantly impacted the Japanese tourism industry. Miyagi Prefecture Governor Yoshihiro Murai instructed residents of the prefecture against rumour-mongering and told tourists that they should not believe these rumours, but Japanese people are not running away overseas. The prophecy is bringing a new challenge to the economy of Japan, with its tourism sector yet to improve, as the date approaches this July.