A terrifying prediction from a woman dubbed the ‘new Baba Vanga’ has prompted some tourists to cancel trips to a holiday hotspot, which has been dubbed in the past among the world’s friendliest nations. Baba Vanga, a blind Bulgarian mystic who died in 1996, is said to have predicted events such as the 9/11 attacks, Princess Diana’s death, and the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States.
Some see Ryo Tatsuki as Japan’s answer to the famous prophet. The manga artist published ‘The Future I Saw’ in 1999, in which she appears to have accurately predicted an earthquake that hit the Tohoku region in March 2011, down to the month. The earthquake triggered a tsunami that killed tens of thousands and hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, resulting in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Her next prediction was for an earthquake to hit in July 2025. She warned that “a crack will open up under the seabed between Japan and the Philippines, sending ashore waves three times as tall as those from the Tohoku earthquake”, according to CNN.
Other ‘psychics’ from Japan and Hong Kong have echoed these warnings, triggering panic online. These earthquake “predictions” have led to superstitious tourists, particularly in East Asia, cancelling or delaying their holidays.
CN Yuen, managing director of Hong Kong-based travel agency WWPKG, said bookings to Japan halved over Easter and are expected to dip further in the next two months.
Anxieties provoked by these prophecies have, according to Yuen, become “ingrained.” He added that “people just say they want to hold off their trip for now.”
Japanese newspaper Mainichi Shimbun reported last week that while Tatsuki liked that her work had made people more prepared for disasters, she urged them not to be “overly swayed” by her dreams and “act appropriately based on expert opinions”.
Fears of a “big one” have been mounting since the Japanese government warned in January that there was an 80% chance of a severe earthquake hitting the Nankai Trough within 30 years.
But some seismologists have been critical of these warnings, questioning whether they can ever be accurate. Robert Geller, a seismologist and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, called the Nankai Trough earthquake a “made-up construct” and a “purely hypothetical scenario.”
He argued that earthquakes don’t occur in cycles but can occur at any place and time, meaning there’s little point in calculating when the next one will occur based on the times of previous ones.
Japan has been named one of the friendliest countries in the world and was ranked by Conde Nast as the sixth friendliest country around the globe, with a score of 93.25 in 2024
This story originally appeared on Express.co.uk
