HONG KONG – Kyoto-based academic German Cheung adopted a “better safe than sorry” approach to the prospect of an earthquake in Japan in early July, despite having traveled to his hometown in Hong Kong just two months earlier.
For his escape, the 47-year-old associate professor of international relations spent 35,000 yen ($243) on a return ticket to Hong Kong departing Friday, one day before a seismic calamity was predicted to occur. He plans to return to Japan next week.
Since January, soothsayers in Hong Kong have talked up potential natural disasters in Japan, with the feng shui practitioners — who generally trade in recommendations about personal arrangements and physical directions of belongings — advising residents to steer clear of the country.
The fortune-tellers referenced a Japanese graphic novel “The Future I Saw” in which artist Ryo Tatsuki predicted a “major calamity” in March 2011, coinciding with a catastrophic quake-tsunami that struck Japan’s northeast and led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster.
In 2021, Tatsuki updated her work and made another prediction, this time for a cataclysmic earthquake she said would hit Japan in July 2025. The press and social media caught on, creating a perfect storm of concern.
The speculation has caused anxiety among Hong Kong travelers, with the number visiting Japan in May declining 11.2 percent from the previous year to 193,100.
The former British colony, which ranked as the fourth-largest source of Japan-bound tourists in 2024, was the only market to record a fall in May, according to the Japan National Tourism Organization.
Cheung, who puts faith in feng shui-based prophecies, said it is easier to “just avoid July” in Japan, at least “from a Hongkonger’s perspective.”
Among the first to suffer a blow were travel agencies and airlines. WWPKG, a holiday operator based in Hong Kong, saw Japan tour bookings halve in April and expects a further decline of up to 80 percent between June and August compared to the same period last year.
At least two Hong Kong-based airlines have reduced or decided to suspend flights to destinations in Japan, including Fukuoka, Sendai, Nagoya, Tokushima, Sapporo, Yonago, Kagoshima and Kumamoto.
“This is a result of a long-term accumulation of negative news,” said Yuen Chun-ning, managing director of WWPKG, which specializes in tours to Japan. The manga itself, as well as feng shui practitioners and social media influencers who brought the message forward across Hong Kong, “all have played a role,” he added.
Situated on the Pacific Ring of Fire, Japan is accustomed to the Earth’s seismic wrath.
But an unprecedented alert issued by the Japan Meteorological Agency last August, warning about the increased risk of a massive quake around the Nankai Trough stretching from central to southwestern Japan along the Pacific coast, hit a nerve.
Manga artist Tatsuki, who cited a prophetic dream in “The Future I Saw,” suggested a fissure could appear in the seabed between Japan and the Philippines on July 5, with tsunamis extending as far as Indonesia and the Northern Mariana Islands in the northwestern Pacific.
The author has been credited with foreseeing the magnitude-9.0 quake that rocked northeastern Japan’s Tohoku region on March 11, 2011.
The online panic about Tatsuki’s next prediction was propagated by feng shui practitioners and psychics, with some advising that people should avoid areas located northeast of Hong Kong this year, such as Japan and South Korea.
Qi Xianyu, a popular feng shui master and television personality in Hong Kong, urged people not to travel to Japan after April, with such recommendations from her and others causing an economic ripple effect across the tourism industry.
But Qi refuses to take any blame for flight cancellations and the fall in travel bookings, saying, “Actually, it’s really unfair.”
“There are also many who don’t believe in me. If something gets better, I don’t get credit, but now that things go wrong, you think it’s my fault,” she complained.
Japanese meteorological authorities have dismissed the rumor-mongering as unscientific, while seismologists have cautioned that accurately forecasting the timing of an earthquake remains virtually impossible.
Tatsuki recently revised her words and said big things “may not necessarily happen” on Saturday. But the damage has been done, with WWPKG’s Yuen pessimistic about a possible rebound in Japan-bound tourism after July 5.
“Out of concern, some customers said outright they won’t go to Japan this year,” Yuen said. “The bigger and more news reports out there, the slower the recovery will be.”
