A magnitude 7.6 earthquake struck the western coast of Japan on New Year’s Day. The earthquake, which was followed by more than 100 aftershocks in the 24 hours since, has left at least 57 dead, according to the Associated Press.
The Japanese Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for communities in Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture, the first such warning in Japan since the 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed thousands. People quickly began posting photos and videos to social media that they said were of the quake or following tsunami.
According to initial data published by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the 2024 earthquake’s highest tsunami wave was four feet tall, although the Japanese Meteorological Agency said that tsunami observatories in two of the hardest hit cities did not record data and the peak wave was likely higher, NHK, a Japanese public news broadcaster, reported.
VERIFY fact-checked whether these videos are from the 2024 earthquake and tsunami.
VIDEO #1
This video, posted on Jan. 1, 2024 with the hashtags #JapanEarthquake and #tsunami, depicts a channel of water and mud rushing downhill, collecting and pushing large amounts of debris down a city street.
THE SOURCES
THE ANSWER
No, this is not a video from the Jan. 1, 2024 tsunami in Japan. This is a video of a 2021 landslide in Japan’s Shizuoka Prefecture.
WHAT WE FOUND
This video depicts a stream of mud and debris rushing downhill from a landslide, not a wave of water surging over a shore from a tsunami.
VERIFY analyzed the keyframes of the video using InVid, a video forensics tool and conducted a reverse image search of those frames using RevEye, a tool that searches multiple image search engines at once.
Through that search, VERIFY found a July 12, 2021 video from Japanese broadcaster Shizuoka Broadcasting System (SBS) showing the same rushing channel of debris-laden mud and water from a different angle. At 0:35, the same red building as the one in the viral video can be seen in the SBS video while brown water full of debris flows past it.
The SBS video is a news report on two survivors who narrowly escaped the debris flow of a landslide that occurred on July 3, 2021 in Atami City, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan.
Additionally, a search of the TikTok account watermarked on the bottom right of the viral video, anature.us, reveals an identical video posted on Oct. 31, 2023, two months before the earthquake.
The person who posted the video to X later replied to the original post to clarify that they “never said this is Japan earthquake video” and that they were only using the hashtags.
VIDEO #2
This video posted to X on Jan. 1, 2024 by multiple accounts depicts a tsunami wave slamming boats against a floodwall as water rushes onto land and over a road where cars are parked.
One of the posts says “pray for Japan” in the video’s caption and uses the hashtag #tsunami.
THE SOURCES
- ANN, a Japanese television news channel
- InVid and RevEye, footage forensics tools
- Videos posted in 2011 by the Associated Press and PBS
THE ANSWER
This is not a video from the Jan. 1, 2024 tsunami in Japan. This video is from a 2011 tsunami that devastated Japan’s eastern coastline.
WHAT WE FOUND
The video contains a watermark for ANN, which stands for All-Nippon News Network, a national television news channel in Japan.
VERIFY found the original broadcast footage posted to ANN’s official YouTube channel in January 2020. The portion of the video posted to X begins at about 3:14.
That video is titled “Tsunami, Great East Japan Earthquake - Miyako city, Iwate Pref, Japan [11 Mar 2011].”
By searching “ANN tsunami video” on Google, VERIFY also found the same clip posted to the Associated Press’ YouTube channel on March 13, 2011. Through a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes, VERIFY found the video 1:45 into a PBS report uploaded March 30, 2011.
The video depicts tsunami waves crashing into the town of Miyako on Japan’s east coast on March 11, 2011 following a magnitude 9.1 earthquake off of Japan’s coast. That wave reached a peak of about 125 feet in Miyako.
VIDEO #3
Another video posted to X and viewed about 5 million times shows what appears to be the beginnings of a tsunami rushing onto shore and past several homes. The video is captioned “tsunami hits Suzu” in Japanese, and includes hashtags with the Japanese characters for tsunami.
THE SOURCES
Google Maps and Images
@fuyu194, who originally recorded the video
THE ANSWER
Yes, this video does show water rushing ashore after the Jan. 1, 2024 earthquake in Suzu, Japan.
WHAT WE FOUND
The person who first posted the viral video to X claimed the video was recorded in Suzu, a city on the Noto Peninsula of Japan’s Ishikawa Prefecture. Suzu covers a large area at the tip of the peninsula, and includes many smaller towns and communities within it.
Although the person who posted that version of the video said in the replies that it was a friend’s video and not their own, another person, @fuyu194, replied to the thread to say that the video was theirs. According to @fuyu194, the video was taken in the Jike district of Misaki Town, which is in Suzu.
Prior to claiming ownership of the video in that thread, @fuyu194 posted another version of the video to their own X account. That version of the video is longer, includes audio and does not include the on-screen text.
VERIFY used Google Maps and Google Images to compare landmarks in the video to current images of Suzu and confirmed that the video depicts a port in the Jike district of Misaki Town in Suzu.
At the start of the video, there appears to be a breakwater, which is a structure used to protect a coastline from tides, with a small red lighthouse on top of it. By analyzing satellite images and photographs of red lighthouses in Suzu, VERIFY identified the lighthouse as Jike Port Breakwater Lighthouse.
Based on the group of houses visible in the video’s foreground, VERIFY identified this hill as the location where the video was recorded.
VERIFY could not find any version of the video posted before the original viral post through a reverse image search of the video’s keyframes. VERIFY also did a reverse image search of the keyframes of the clean version of the video posted by @fuyu194 and could not find that version of the video posted anywhere else online.
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