Japan Dismisses Earthquake Link to Manga Prediction
(MENAFN) A powerful earthquake struck off the Tokara Islands in southwestern Japan on Saturday morning, but the Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) swiftly dismissed any connection to a viral disaster prediction from a manga author.
The tremor, with an initial magnitude of 5.4, hit Kagoshima Prefecture's Tokara island chain at 6:29 a.m. local time. The earthquake is part of a series of seismic events in the region that has led some residents to evacuate.
"It is absolutely a coincidence. There is no causal connection," Ayataka Ebita, director of the JMA’s Earthquake and Tsunami Observation Division, said during a press conference.
This statement came amid growing anxiety spurred by a prediction in the 2021 reprint of The Future I Saw, a manga by Japanese artist Ryo Tatsuki. The manga forecasted that Japan would experience a major disaster on July 5, fueling fears that the quake was tied to the prediction.
Tatsuki, who gained notoriety after her 1999 manga edition accurately mentioned a catastrophic quake and tsunami in March 2011, had already scaled back her forecast in June, retracting the specific date for the megaquake. However, her previous predictions—especially one coinciding with the devastating 2011 disaster that led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis—continued to spark widespread concern.
Ebita emphasized that current scientific methods cannot predict earthquakes with certainty and clarified that any coincidence with Tatsuki’s forecast is purely accidental.
The region has seen a sharp increase in seismic activity, with over 1,300 quakes detected since June 21, including a 5.5-magnitude tremor on Thursday, according to local media reports.
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