The 7.5-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan’s western coast on January 1, 2024 triggered tsunami waves more than a metre high but a TikTok video of fishing boats battered by waves is unrelated to the disaster. The clip, which has racked up thousands of views alongside the false claim, has previously circulated in posts following the earthquake and tsunami that devastated Japan’s northeast in 2011.
“Tsunami on January 1, 2024,” reads the Korean-language text overlaid on the video shared here on TikTok on January 1, alongside the hashtags #Japan, #Tsunami and #Earthquake.
The footage shows a coastal area flooded by rapid waters and fishing boats battered by intense waves.
It was shared after a powerful 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck Ishikawa prefecture on the western coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu on New Year’s Day. Officials say at least 62 people were killed, and more than 300 injured.
The earthquake also toppled buildings, caused a major fire and tore apart roads.
Waves at least 1.2 metres (four feet) high hit the port of Wajima, and a series of smaller tsunamis were reported elsewhere, including as far away as the northern island of Hokkaido.
Warnings of much larger waves proved unfounded and on January 2, Japan lifted all tsunami warnings.
The same video was shared with a similar false claim here on social media platform X, as well as here on DC Inside, a popular South Korean forum.
But the video shows a Japanese port hit by tsunami waves in 2011, not 2024.
Tsunami clip
Letters and numbers seen on a boat at the one-minute, 10-second mark of the video are written backwards, indicating the footage had been horizontally flipped.
A reverse image search on Google using a mirrored screenshot of the footage found it was posted in a YouTube video from user “wngad869” on March 18, 2011 — days after the 2011 Tohoku earthquake that hit northeastern Japan on March 11 that year (archived link).
The 9.0-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Fukushima triggered a deadly tsunami on Japan’s northeastern coast (archived link). The disaster left more than 18,500 people dead or missing.
The YouTube video’s Japanese-language description reads, “3:48 p.m. Momoishi Fishing Port, Oirase Town, Aomori Prefecture. 2011.3.11. You can see the chimney of Mitsubishi Paper Mills and the Earth exploration ship.”
Below are screenshot comparisons of the video shared with the false claim on TikTok flipped horizontally (left) and the YouTube video from March 2011 (right):
The same video was posted on “2011 Japan Tsunami Archives”, a YouTube channel that collects footage from the disaster, on June 16, 2022 (archived link). It also credited the video to the user “wngad869”.
Identical footage was also published on the Japanese video sharing platform niconico on March 22, 2011, with a similar description (archived link).
Using the description and features seen in the original YouTube video, AFP geolocated the footage to a port area in Aomori, northern Japan (archived link).
