Hong Kong travel agencies have not recorded widespread cancellations of Japan-bound tour groups for the coming weekend, despite a manga artist’s widely discussed prediction that a mega-earthquake will hit the country on Saturday.

But some business insiders suggested the number of tours this summer was expected to fall by half compared with last year.

The Japan National Tourism Organisation reported that only 193,100 visitors from Hong Kong were recorded coming to the country in May, down by 11.2 per cent from the same month last year.

The quake prediction, which originated from a manga titled The Future That I Saw, Complete Edition, published in 2021, pinpoints July 5 as the date for the mega quake.

In a previous edition of the work first published in 1999, author Ryo Tatsuki had warned of a major disaster in March 2011, a date which turned out to coincide with the cataclysmic earthquake that struck Japan’s northern Tohoku region that very month.

Despite internet chatter on Tatsuki’s “prediction”, two prominent Hong Kong travel agencies, EGL Tours and Arrow Travel Agency, told the Post they had not experienced significant cancellations of Hong Kong tour groups set to depart to Japan soon.