Over the past two weeks, more than 900 earthquakes have rocked a remote island chain in southern Japan that’s home to about 700 people.
The quakes started in late June, centered offshore around the Tokara Islands, a chain of islands so remote that the nearest hospital is a six-hour ferry ride away. While the strongest tremor so far has been a 5.5 magnitude jolt, the relentless swarm has left locals exhausted and on edge.
A resident, speaking to local news outlet MBC, said, “It feels like it’s always shaking.” Others reported ghost quakes, and phantom tremors felt even when the ground is still. Add in eerie ocean roars and homes that sway like carnival rides, and you’ve got a chain of nightmare islands that feel like they’re being ripped apart.
Some Think a Manga Predicted Japan’s Southern Islands Getting Hit By 900 Earthquakes In Two Weeks
The Tokaras have been through this before. But it’s never been this bad.
Japan sits atop the Pacific Ring of Fire, so the country’s used to a geological rumbling, averaging 1,500 quakes a year. But this frequency has even seasoned locals rattled. Authorities are on standby with evacuation plans, while some guesthouses have stopped taking tourists and are prepping to become emergency shelters.
There’s also a prophetic apocalyptic element to it: in a 2021 reissue of a 1999 manga called The Future I Saw, creator Ryo Tatsuki referenced a dream in which a megaquake hits in July 2025.
People are giving that prediction credence because in the first edition of the manga, the author warned that a major natural disaster would strike in March 2011. That just so happened to be the exact month and year that Japan was hit with a massive earthquake, tsunami, and a nuclear disaster that killed thousands.
Predictably, tourists are bailing. Airlines are canceling flights. Travel agencies are offering earthquake insurance. And Tatsuki herself is begging people to chill, reminding everyone she’s not a prophet, just a manga artist with a vivid imagination.
Speaking with NBC News, Seismologist Robert Geller summed it up best: earthquake prediction is “impossible.” But try telling that to Instagram doomsayers, who are probably the same ones who were talking about the predictions of Nostradamus nonstop back in 2012.
AloJapan.com