Japan’s weather agency said an earthquake that rattled small islands in the nation’s southwest on Saturday was in no way connected to a manga author’s disaster prediction that went viral on social media.
“It is absolutely a coincidence. There is no causal connection,” Ayataka Ebita of the Japan Meteorological Agency told a press conference.
Earlier in the day, a temblor with a preliminary magnitude of 5.4 struck off the Tokara island chain, the latest in a series of seismic events in the area.
Speculation has spread that Japan will be hit by a major disaster in July – specifically on Saturday – based on a prediction made in The Future I Saw, a manga written by Japanese artist Ryo Tatsuki.
.jpg)
10:45
Why a viral manga warning of a megaquake has some travellers cancelling Japan trips
Why a viral manga warning of a megaquake has some travellers cancelling Japan trips
Tatsuki gained a profile after her prediction of a “major calamity” in March 2011 coincided with a catastrophic quake-tsunami that struck Japan’s northeast and led to the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident.
AloJapan.com