Over 300 Earthquakes Rumble in Sea Off Japan’s Kagoshima Pref. Islands

[earthquake]

Over 300 Earthquakes Rumble in Sea Off Japan’s Kagoshima Pref. Islands, Putting Residents on Alert​

The Yomiuri Shimbun

17:59 JST, June 25, 2025

The sea off the Tokara Islands in Kagoshima Prefecture was hit with 336 earthquakes measuring at least a 1 on the Japanese seismic scale from Saturday to 5 p.m. Tuesday, according to a regional branch of the Japan Meteorological Agency.

Six of the earthquakes measured a 4 on the Japanese seismic scale, which goes as high as 7. Experts have suggested that even larger quakes could occur, and the agency’s Fukuoka regional headquarters is calling for people in the area to stay on the alert against earthquakes with strong shaking.

Tremors in the sea near the islands grew more frequent after 8 p.m. on Saturday, according to the regional headquarters. The largest quake over the period struck on Sunday afternoon and registered a magnitude of 5.1. There have been as many as 15 quakes per hour. On Tuesday, at 2:23 a.m. and again at 4:04 p.m., shaking measuring a 4 on the Japanese seismic scale was felt on Akusekijima Island in the prefecture’s village of Toshima.

The sea near the Tokara Islands has been the source of many prior earthquakes. In December 2021, tremors measuring 1 or higher on the Japanese seismic scale struck 308 times. On Dec. 9, 2021, a quake measuring an upper 5 on the seismic scale hit Akusekijima Island, forcing 30 residents to evacuate to Kagoshima City and elsewhere.

According to Hisayoshi Yokose, an associate professor at Kumamoto University specializing in marine volcanology, near the islands the Philippine Sea Plate is subducted beneath another tectonic plate connected to the Asian continent. This geology tends to cause a buildup of tension that results in earthquakes. Yokose thinks the recent quakes have occurred inside the continental plate.

“Past trends show that even bigger earthquakes occur after seismic activity subsides,” he said.

The area where the quakes have occurred is part of a volcanic cluster that stretches from the Kirishima mountain range, in Miyazaki and Kagoshima prefectures, to Io-Torishima Island in Okinawa Prefecture.

Junichi Nakajima, a Tokyo Institute of Technology professor in seismology, suggested that magma may have cooled when rising through the ground and water in that magma may have seeped out, making the fault prone to slippage.

On Sunday, Mt. Shinmoedake, part of the Kirishima mountains, erupted for the first time in seven years. However, the volcano, which rises to a height of 1,421 meters, lies at a distance from the Tokara Islands.

“I don’t think it had any effect” on the earthquakes, Nakajima said.

As of Sunday, 667 residents were living on seven remote islands in Toshima.

“You never know when a big quake will come. It reminds me of the one that we had four years ago that registered a 5 on the seismic scale,” said a 34-year-old man running a minshuku bed and breakfast on Akusekijima Island.

Since Monday, students have been commuting to a school on the island were wearing helmets. Some of the school’s 14 children have reportedly said they cannot sleep at night.

“We’ll try to relieve their concerns as much as we can,” said the school’s principal.

 

[syed putra]

Japanese live in " Quake" Anxiety as it can hit sometimes in the middle of the night when they are asleep.

This quake is right at the bottom of honshu island and if it occurs, will wipe Shanghai off the map if a great tsunami is created.

 

[red amoeba]

It’s coming the big one. Time for jipun to pay their debts of invading China and nanjing rape.

 

[eatshitndie]

oh shit! if sakurajima blows up there goes my cruise to kagoshima. becums kanogoshima.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

Oh no..so the prediction is true..

Holiday bookings to Japan are down - could a 90s manga comic’s earthquake prediction be to blame?
People visit Korakuen Garden in Okayama, Japan.
A fall in holiday bookings to Japan is being blamed on The Future I Saw, a Japanese graphic novel by Ryo Tatsuki, which declared a major disaster would occur on 5 July 2025. Photograph: Philip Fong/AFP/Getty Images
This article is more than 1 month old
The Future I Saw, a Japanese graphic novel by Ryo Tatsuki, declared a major disaster would occur on 5 July 2025

A grim prediction made in a manga first published a quarter of a century ago is being blamed for a dramatic fall in holiday bookings to Japan from several Asian countries.

Flight reservations to Japan from some of its key tourism markets have reportedly plummeted, with some linking the fall to The Future I Saw, a Japanese graphic novel based on the “prophetic” dreams of its author, Ryo Tatsuki.

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The cover of the original, published in 1999, refers to a “great disaster” occurring in March 2011 – the date Japan experienced a deadly earthquake and tsunami. In a new edition containing additional material that was published in 2021, Tatsuki said the next major disaster would occur on 5 July 2025. Her claim has fuelled sensationalist social media posts warning people to stay away from Japan.

While there is no scientific basis to the claims that are fuelling online speculation, Tatsuki’s dreams have been given credence by her previous reference to March 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami killed more than 18,000 people in north-east Japan and triggered the triple meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

Japanese manga comic The Future I Saw.
Japanese manga comic The Future I Saw. Photograph: The Future I Saw
The impact of her latest prediction is being felt most in South Korea, Taiwan and Hong Kong, according to Bloomberg Intelligence, which used ForwardKeys data to gauge the impact on airline bookings. Average bookings from Hong Kong were down 50% year-on-year, it said, adding that those between late June and early July had plummeted by as much as 83%.

A travel agency in Hong Kong said the manga had already affected people’s holiday plans, with bookings to Japan during the April-May spring break down by half from last year.

Greater Bay Airlines said it was initially puzzled that reservations for spring were lower than in previous years, given that demand is usually high during the cherry blossom-viewing season in Japan and the Easter holidays in Hong Kong.

“We expected around 80% of the seats to be taken, but actual reservations came to only 40%,” said Hiroki Ito, the general manager of the airline’s Japan office, told the Asahi Shimbun recently.

The airline – along with Hong Kong Airlines – has reduced services to Japan, even as officials pleaded with travellers to ignore the rumours. Yoshihiro Murai, the governor of Miyagi – one of three prefectures hardest hit by the 2011 disaster – said the unfounded story had started to affect tourism to the region and implored people to ignore them.

The trend is out of sync with a tourism boom that has seen record numbers of people visit Japan since the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. A record 3.9 million people visited in April, encouraged by a weaker yen, while the government is hoping the annual number will grow to 60 million by the end of the decade.

The public broadcaster NHK said the manga had spawned more than 1,400 videos on YouTube – which have together been viewed more than 100m times – some of which added to the sense of alarm with predictions of a volcanic eruption and a meteor strike. The re-published version has sold almost 1m copies, it added.

Japan is one of the most earthquake-prone countries in the world due to its location on the Pacific’s seismically hyperactive “ring of fire”. But experts point out it is impossible to predict the timing and location of earthquakes with any accuracy.

Concern that the country could soon be struck by a major earthquake intensified last August, when the then prime minister, Fumio Kishida, cancelled an overseas trip after seismologists warned that the risk of a “megaquake” occurring off the country’s Pacific coast had increased after an earlier quake.

In April, a government taskforce said a quake of up to magnitude-9 in the Nankai Trough, located off Japan’s Pacific coast, would kill as many 298,000 people and destroy more than 2 million buildings, adding that there was a roughly 80% chance of such a quake happening in the next 30 years.

Tatsuki, meanwhile, has warned people not to take her predictions literally. In a recent interview with the Mainichi Shimbun, the artist said she was pleased that her work had raised awareness of the need to prepare for natural disasters, but added: “It’s important not to be unnecessarily influenced … and to listen to the opinions of experts.”

Explore more on these topics

 

[earthquake]

...it's not a matter of if, but when...

 

[tobelightlight]

 

[tobelightlight]

 

[Testing]

Is the dreaded omen of July 5th drawing near?

 

[NanoSpeed]

oh shit! if sakurajima blows up there goes my cruise to kagoshima. becums kanogoshima.

A 6.9 if you are there.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

 

[tobelightlight]

 

[bigozt]

Karmic for the Nips! Wahhahaha! Remember Sook Ching.

 

[zhihau]

May all be well and happy.

 

[laksaboy]

More like the great tsunami along the plate fault will move westwards and render the entire coastline of China destroyed.

 

[Hypocrite-The]

More like the great tsunami along the plate fault will move westwards and render the entire coastline of China destroyed.

Oh no..what will happen to Hongkielands and Canton?

 

[WangChuk]

so save up $$$$ and go Japan after all the happenings to marry over Jap Chiobus ....