What is The Future I Saw?
Watashi ga Mita Mirai (The Future I Saw) is a manga by the artist Ryo Tatsuki, based on her “dream diary” recording her own dreams, published in 1999. Because the dream diary drawn on the cover included the words “great disaster in March 2011,” after the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011 it went viral online as “the book that predicted the earthquake,” and used copies sold for high prices.
The complete edition and “July 2025”
In 2021 the work was republished with new material as Watashi ga Mita Mirai: Kanzenban (complete edition). In it, Tatsuki described a new precognitive dream in which an undersea eruption between Japan and the Philippines causes a huge tsunami, about three times as high as that of the Great East Japan Earthquake, striking the countries of the Pacific coast; the book’s band read, “The real great disaster will come in July 2025.”
The work also stated that the dream was seen on “July 5, 2021,” and suggested that “if the day of the dream is the day it comes true,” the next great disaster would be on July 5, 2025. On social media, the idea that “a great disaster will strike on July 5, 2025” took on a life of its own.
Growing anxiety
In 2025 the prophecy became a major topic not only in Japan but in Hong Kong, Taiwan and elsewhere, and there were even reports of people canceling trips to Japan. In response, the head of the Japan Meteorological Agency warned at a press conference that predicting an earthquake with a specific date and place is impossible with current science, and that such predictions should be considered false.
Tatsuki herself explained in a book published in 2025 and in interviews that “the day I had a dream is not necessarily the day something will happen,” expressing her bewilderment that the date had taken on a life of its own.
July 5, 2025, and the outcome
On July 5, 2025, no great disaster like the one prophesied occurred. Some people linked the prophecy to a swarm of earthquakes in the Tokara Islands of Kagoshima Prefecture around the same time, and to the tsunami warning issued for Japan’s Pacific coast after a huge earthquake off Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula on July 30, but these were different from what was prophesied (an undersea eruption in the Philippine Sea and a giant tsunami).
The buzz around the prophecy led many people to stock up on emergency supplies and check their evacuation routes. Whether or not you believe in prophecies, everyday preparation remains important. Other famous books of prophecy include the Prophecies of Nostradamus and Prince Shotoku’s Miraiki.
