Hong Kong travelers love Japan. The country consistently ranks fourth in inbound visitors to Japan, exceeding the US and coming in behind Taiwan.
However, lately, there’s been a marked dip in flights from Hong Kong to Japan. The reason? A Japanese manga whose author claims they’ve seen the future – and it doesn’t look good for Japan.
The predictions
The Future I’ve Seen (私が見た未来; watashi ga mita mirai) is the work of one Tatsuki Ryō. Born in 1954, she decided to become a manga-ka after a traffic accident when she was 17. She wanted to create work that left something of herself behind, but that also didn’t require showing her face in public.
Tatsuki has been journaling her dreams since 1978. While she insists that most of her dreams are normal, some were so vivid and disturbing that she turned them into two illustrated stories that originally ran in Honto ni Atta Kowai Hanashi (True Scary Stories) and Kyōfu Taiken (Frightening Experiences) in the late 1990s.
Future was originally published as a tankōbon (collected volume) in 1999. That same year, at age 44, Tatsuki officially retired as a manga-ka. However, her work garnered attention after the deadly Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami. The cover for the manga included the phrase “Calamity in March 2011” – the month of the earthquake and tsunami that claimed 15,900 lives.
Within the manga itself, Tatsuki tells of her dream of a great tsunami that wipes out much of lower Japan. In the 2021 re-release, she pinned the date of this event as occurring in July 2025 – i.e., in two months from this writing.
A 30% drop in travel from Hong Kong
Will Tatsuki’s prediction come true? Whether it does or not, enough people in Hong Kong believe it will that it’s impacting tourism to Japan.
Greater Bay Airlines in Hong Kong reports it’s seen a 30% drop already in travel to Japan during this year’s Lunar New Year period, typically a heavy time for travel. A survey showed that Tatsuki’s book, whose 2021 “Complete Edition” has been translated into Cantonese, is to blame.
Local Hong Kong media also point to Tatsuki’s book as the source of rumors of a great calamity. Additionally, a famous feng shui master in the territory is said to have made a similar prediction of a “large risk of an earthquake” in Japan between June and August.
One woman interviewed by Record China at Hong Kong International Airport said she was going to Tokyo because there were things she wanted to buy, and she had plans with a friend. However, she’s canceled a second trip to Japan in August. “If there’s danger, I figured it’s best to bail,” she said.
The drop in demand has caused the airline to cut one of its three weekly round-trip flights between Hong Kong and Tokushima on Japan’s island of Shikoku. That’s forced the governor of Shikoku, Gotōda Masazumi, to hold a press conference insisting everything’s just fine.
“That sort of thing can happen anywhere. Let me be clear: When that happens, I tell you we’re completely prepared to protect, not just our citizens, but visitors as well.”
Did this manga actually predict the future?
I’m not a huge believer in the predictive power of dreams. (Unfortunately, my wife is. She saw me writing this article and is now terrified.) So I’m not making preparations to leave the country ahead of July.
Still, I was curious: Do Tatsuki’s predictions stand up to scrutiny?
A number of other predictions are attributed to this dream journal manga. For example, Tatsuki was said to have predicted the Hanshin/Awaji earthquake of January 17th, 1995. She’s also said to have predicted the COVID-19 crisis and the deaths of Princess Diana and singer/songwriter Ozaki Yutaka (who passed in 1992).
However, as the site Nazo-Toki explains in analyzing this manga, most of Tatsuki’s predictions are either vague or, in several cases, non-existent.
For example, there’s no evidence in the manga she predicted either the COVID-19 crisis or Ozaki’s death. As for the Hanshin quake, the date she wrote was January 2nd, 15 days before. The text doesn’t refer to an earthquake but to “a fissure appearing in the ground.”
The text also seems to say that Tatsuki’s dreams told her she would be taken away by an angel in five years’ time if she so desired. That date would be January 2nd, 2000. At the time, Nazo-Toki argues, some folks predicted the world would end in 2000. That makes the January 2nd date feel more like the prediction of a Christian-style apocalyptic event than an earthquake.
As for Diana, Tatsuki did indeed dream of the ex-princess holding a baby on August 31st, 1992. Diana died in a car crash on that same day, five years later. However, the dream doesn’t seem to make any reference to her death.
The death of Freddie Mercury?!
One story that figures prominently in Tatsuki’s two stories about her dreams is Queen singer Freddie Mercury. Tatsuki says she dreamed of Mercury twice. The first was on June 11th, 1976, in which she dreamed she saw news of Mercury’s death on TV. Then again, on November 28th, 1986, she dreamed she saw statues of three of the band members, with Mercury’s statue absent.
Mercury died on November 24th, 1991, due to complications from AIDS.
Tatsuki didn’t make a prediction of the date of his death. However, Nazo-Toki points out, the author contradicts herself about when she learned of Mercury’s death. In “Message From a Dream,” she says she learned about it by reading the newspaper on November 28th. However, in “The Future I’ve Seen,” she says a friend called her on the 24th before she was supposed to leave for a trip to the UK and told her to turn on the news, and that’s how she learned of his death.
Tatsuki’s response
The 2021 edition of the manga contains extensive commentary from Tatsuki herself on her predictions. Throughout her commentary (and the manga itself), she dismisses any notion that she’s special or gifted with psychic sight. She thinks everyone has these dreams, but “they forget them because they don’t write them down like I do.”
The author says herself that she thinks some of her dreams have been misinterpreted. For example, she says her dream about Diana didn’t feel like a death premonition and that “readers added this interpretation” themselves.
As for the dream of the angel, Tatsuki now interprets that as telling her that “my part has ended.” In other words, she’s done what she was sent to do – warn the world about the July 2025 earthquake.
It’s not all bad news according to the author, though.
“I see a bright future after the great earthquake of July 2025,” she writes in the 2021 release. “I see all the people on Earth in bright and shining condition and full of life.” She thinks the disaster will show everyone the folly of war and conflict and usher in a new era of peace.
It’s a lovely vision. Let’s hope it doesn’t take a massive disaster to get us there.
Sources
「7月に日本で大地震」…漫画の「予言」信じて訪日敬遠か 香港―仙台、徳島便が減便. Sankei Shimbun
「大地震」の予言で日本行き控える人続出、一方で気にしない人も―香港メディア. Record China
４日間限定「『私が見た未来 完全版』500円セール」を開催！PR Times
竜樹諒. Wikipedia JP
『私が見た未来』作者が明かした、東日本大震災を“予知”するまで「轟音とともに津波が迫り、逃げ惑う人々の中で…」. Bunshun Online
数々の大災害や著名人の死を警告する予言漫画『私が見た未来』. Nazo-Toki
