Ryo Tatsuki is a Japanese manga artist who has earned significant attention for her so-called prophetic dreams, which she documented in her 1999 manga titled The Future I Saw (私が見た未来). In this work, she illustrated 15 dreams she experienced between 1985 and 1999, many of which she claimed foretold future events.
Among the events she is said to have predicted are:
The death of Freddie Mercury in 1991.
The 1995 Kobe earthquake.
The 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami.
The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, including its peak in April and a potential resurgence a decade later.
Her predictions have led some to refer to her as the "Japanese Baba Vanga," drawing parallels to the Bulgarian mystic known for her own prophecies.
One of Tatsuki's most discussed predictions pertains to a catastrophic event she foresees occurring in July 2025. In her dream, she described the ocean south of Japan "boiling," which she interpreted as a possible undersea volcanic eruption leading to a massive tsunami. The anticipated impact zone includes regions such as Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
In order to debunk cases of loose retro-fitting, we need to pay attention to the correspondence between the predictions and the event.
Retro-fitting, also known as “postdiction”, is the practice of taking vague or general statements made in the past and matching them to events that have already occurred, creating the illusion that a true prediction was made. This is extensively used in religion and by psychics. Rather than forecasting future events with clear, specific details, retro-fitting relies on the human tendency to reinterpret broad descriptions in light of new information. It often involves selective memory, ignoring incorrect or irrelevant predictions while highlighting any perceived "hits," and is a major reason why so-called prophecies or psychic visions can seem impressively accurate after the fact, even though they would have been meaningless or unconvincing beforehand.
If I predict that John is going to win $5000 playing the lottery in July and Fred wins $500 playing bingo in June, I have not really predicted anything, have I? Yet, some people would be prepared to admire my predictive powers. Here, we call them mugs.
The method of prediction matters. Tatsuki does not claim to be a prophet or a medium. She said she simply recorded her vivid dreams, some of which she later associated with real-world events. This method immediately introduces hindsight bias , the tendency to match past vague statements to later real-world happenings. This is a pattern observable throughout human history, particularly with figures like Nostradamus and Baba Vanga. It relies on the flawed nature of the human brain, which is ill-equipped to reach an objective truth from observations. We tend to see what we want to see. An early chapter of my book “Divine Projection: How and Why Humans Created God” deals with our brain’s biases.
I remember an exercise we once did in psychology class. We were asked to choose a side on a major debate topic such as the death penalty, abortion, and similar issues. After making our choice, we were paired off in twos. Just as we were about to begin the debates in front of the class, the lecturer announced that we would have to argue the opposite position to the one we had chosen. If you had picked “against the death penalty,” you were now required to spend five minutes arguing in favour of it.
The experience was eye-opening. Most of us quickly realised that we are very good at finding arguments to support the views we already hold. However, when forced to argue the other side, our performance noticeably declined. It highlighted how deeply bias shapes our reasoning and how unfamiliar we are with thinking critically from a standpoint we do not emotionally or intellectually endorse. It also revealed how genuine understanding demands more than simply gathering evidence for what we already believe, it requires the ability to fairly represent and challenge opposing views, something most people rarely practise.
It is not until you train your brain to be more objective that you begin to see just how deeply subjective it is. Most people move through life believing that their views are the result of clear thinking and sound judgement. Yet when you make a conscious effort to step back, to question your assumptions, and to argue against your own beliefs, you discover how much of your thinking is influenced by emotion, habit, and personal bias. True objectivity does not come naturally; it is a skill that must be developed through discipline, reflection, and a willingness to challenge yourself. Only by doing so can you begin to separate what is true from what simply feels true.
Many people are willing to accept so-called predictions without putting them through any serious or sceptical examination. Instead of questioning the source, the method, or the likelihood of such claims, they are often eager to believe simply because the idea is exciting, comforting, or aligns with what they already hope to be true. Proper scrutiny demands that we ask tough questions, seek evidence, and consider alternative explanations. Without that process, predictions become little more than stories we tell ourselves, offering the illusion of insight without any real foundation. Believing without questioning leaves people vulnerable to misinformation, manipulation, and disappointment when reality fails to match their expectations.
So let’s put Ryo Tatsuki through a solid workout…
Tatsuki's original dreams, as described in her manga The Future I Saw, were often general. She would dream of "a large earthquake," "a famous singer's death," "a great tsunami," or "a new disease."
None of these are rare events in the contexts she lived in: Japan is an earthquake-prone country, tsunamis are an ever-present risk, celebrities dying is hardly remarkable, and pandemics were widely predicted by medical experts long before COVID-19.
When something later happens that seems to match one of these general descriptions, people "fill in the blanks" emotionally and cognitively.
True predictions must be documented and fixed in form before the event, without the possibility of retroactive editing or reinterpretation.
Tatsuki's manga was published in 1999, so technically it is an earlier document, but crucially the attention to specific dreams only gained prominence after major events happened (e.g., the 2011 tsunami, the 2020 pandemic).
There is no rigorous record showing people citing her dream before the event, warning "look, Ryo Tatsuki said this would happen." That only started after the disasters, when people went looking for matches. Retro-fitting at its best!
In psychology and statistics, a high base rate means that something is likely to happen in a given environment or population simply because of how often it occurs.
Japan always faces the risk of tsunamis and earthquakes. If she predicted flooding of the Sahara desert, I would pay more attention.
Infectious disease outbreaks are a known risk every decade or so.
Celebrities fall ill and die all the time.
Thus, dreaming of such things without specific dates, places, or unique details is bound to eventually "match" some future events by pure statistical probability.
People remember the "hits" and forget the "misses." If Ryo Tatsuki had 15 dreams, and even three seem to loosely match real events, people will highlight those three and ignore the rest.
This phenomenon is well documented in the psychology of belief in prophecy, astrology, and psychic readings: it is called confirmation bias.
Descriptions like "boiling ocean" could be matched to a volcanic eruption, an undersea earthquake, a tsunami, or even a nuclear event.
The lack of specificity means that no matter what happens in 2025 (even if it is just a moderate undersea disturbance), some will claim that she "got it right." This technique of widening the meaning to capture various outcomes is the essence of retro-fitting.
Ryo Tatsuki's "predictions" thus fit the classic model of retro-fitting, selective validation, and hindsight bias. She is not unique in this and similar mechanisms are behind the perceived success of Nostradamus, Baba Vanga, and countless "psychics" who suddenly appear to have foreseen catastrophes when, in fact, they merely made broad, general statements later attached to events by people desperate for meaning.
If we apply scientific standards (clear, detailed, timestamped, and consistently accurate forecasts), her "predictions" collapse into vague dreams later made relevant by interpretation, not by original precision.
Prophecies in religious texts often rely on very similar psychological and interpretive mechanics to retro-fitting, though the process is sometimes more complex due to the sacred status of the texts and the emotional investment of believers. In fact, many of the reasons people find religious prophecies convincing are rooted not in the objective clarity or accuracy of the predictions themselves, but in how human beings interpret and reframe vague, symbolic, or generalised language after events have occurred.
As for Ryo Tatsuki, let us wait and see how accurate her July 2025 prediction will be. Before placing any weight on it, however, it is worth asking why the prediction did not begin with something precise, such as "on July 12th, 2025 at 16:04 Tokyo time..." A real prediction, if it were genuine, would contain that level of detail. Instead, what we are given is a vague and open-ended statement, thrown into the air in the hope that something within it might loosely match future events. This kind of vagueness allows almost any outcome to be interpreted as a success, but it is not evidence of foresight. It is a clever way to avoid being proven wrong while still claiming accuracy after the fact.
While I am here, I will make a prediction of my own. In the second half of 2025, there will be a major disaster resulting in many deaths. No, I am not trying to fool you. I am simply inviting you to fool yourself, in much the same way that the captive audience of Ryo Tatsuki loves fooling itself.
(Written at the request of a reader.)
