In 35 days, a ‘mega tsunami' will devastate Japan (according to a comic book ‘prophet')

Telegraph

2 days ago

A long-forgotten prophecy of impending apocalypse has resurfaced in Japan, putting the disaster-prone country I call home on edge once again.
According to Ryo Tatsuki's manga comic book, The Future I Saw, the sea south of the island nation will bubble in July this year, intimating that a huge earthquake and tsunami are imminent.
The book, which was originally published in 1999 and depicts cartoon visions of Tatsuki's dreams, has become a recent bestseller after going viral on social media.
Hundreds of thousands of copies have been sold, driven by claims that the 70-year-old artist and author accurately predicted the 1995 Great Hanshin (Kobe) earthquake in Japan, the Covid-19 pandemic and the sudden deaths of Freddie Mercury and Princess Diana.
Many believe the original version of her comic – with a cover warning of a 'massive disaster in March 2011' – predicted the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami that struck Japan 14 years ago, triggering the meltdown at the Fukushima nuclear plant, the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
In an updated edition published in 2021, Tatsuki predicts the next disaster will strike on July 5, when a seabed crack between Japan and the Philippines will send waves three times taller than those seen in the 2011 tsunami crashing ashore.
While gripping the nation, her ominous tale is also having an impact far beyond Japan itself, triggering mass cancellations of trips to the country.
Chinese tourists, in particular, seem to be taking the prophecy seriously, with many cancelling their summer trips to Japan. The fear has also spread to countries like Thailand and Vietnam, where travel warnings about Japan are widely shared on social media, and to Hong Kong, where psychics have issued warnings of impending disaster.
Absurd, superstitious nonsense? Maybe. But the powerful impact of Tatsuki's supposed prophecy has less to do with her past track record – which like most mystics consists of connecting vague utterances to real-world events – and more to do with a deep-seated anxiety about the geological realities of East Asia.
Japan itself lies on the ring of fire – on top of four major tectonic plates – and the fear of natural disaster prowls the consciousness of every resident in the country.
Anyone who lives here is likely to receive every year, through the door, a detailed 'disaster map' from the local government – marking areas at risk of tsunami, floods and landslides – and showing nearby evacuation centres. Everyone knows where these shelters are and regularly takes part in drills. It's common for people to keep a bag of emergency supplies by their front door, ready in case they suddenly become homeless refugees.
So much so that it's easy to become blasé about the threat of natural disasters. But earlier this year, Japan's government earthquake research committee issued its latest best-guess prediction on the likelihood and impact of a massive quake in the Nankai Trough – located in the waters south of Japan along the Pacific coast. The scenario they envision is jaw-droppingly apocalyptic.
The committee warns there is an '80 per cent' chance of a mega earthquake, magnitude 8 or higher, striking the area within the next 30 years.
Such an event would generate waves up to 100ft tall, devastating the entire seaboard of central Japan – especially the south coast of Shikoku, the Kii Peninsula, and the Nagoya region – but also reaching Osaka, Kobe and other major urban centres. Around 300,000 people could be killed, 12 million displaced and the immediate damage estimated at nearly £1.5 trillion – roughly double Japan's national budget.
Those figures are staggering. Not just in the projected number of deaths and the cost of the devastation, but also in the relative nearness of the timescale and the extremely high odds of the disaster occurring.
In other words, what the experts are saying is: it's very probably going to happen. And relatively soon. And a 'go bag' by the door of your apartment is not going to save you or your family.
More than the rediscovery of a 26-year-old comic book, it is this science-backed prophecy from the Japanese government that has prompted the deep unease and sense of panic.
Predictions, of course, can be notoriously unreliable. Go back to the late 1980s and early 1990s and all the talk was of the 'Big One', the devastating earthquake that tended to strike Tokyo every 70 years or so (the last catastrophic quakes in Tokyo were in 1923 and 1855, killing over 100,000 and 7,000 people respectively).
But in a country like Japan, attempting to outrun disaster – predicted or otherwise – can prove futile. In the early 1990s, I decided I would permanently avoid Tokyo going forward and moved to Kobe, where no one could ever remember an earthquake having taken place. That is until the morning of Jan 17 1995, when a huge earthquake killed around 6,000 people in the city and destroyed the apartment I was living in.
So I continue to edgily live in Japan alongside the ever-present threat. I drill my children on what to do if a major quake occurs – flee north as fast as your legs will take you to get away from any accompanying tsunami. I tell them that if our house collapses, they are not to spend more than ten minutes looking for Daddy's body, but to evacuate immediately. Once uphill, don't look back, I say.
For the 37 years in which I have been visiting and living in Japan, I have been constantly weighing up its risks. But only when I read the latest earthquake research committee prediction did it occur to me that I still wasn't fully processing the information. I suspect even the tourists cancelling their trips this summer – because they hope a clairvoyant can pin down 'risk' to a specific day – don't fully appreciate just how dire the warning is.
Because if a catastrophic, apocalypse-style event of the like thought by experts to be highly probable in the next three decades actually occurs, then the country as we know it would, in the space of an hour or so, pretty much cease to exist. The almost perfectly safe, charming, jewel-like existence enjoyed in modern Japan would suddenly be turned into something comparable to the most hellish of war zones.