Dragon's Triangle

The Dragon's Triangle is an area of the Pacific Ocean to the South of Japan. The Triangle contains Yamatai, the island on which the events of Tomb Raider (2013) takes place. The area is notoriously known for its violent storms and missing ships.

The Triangle is inspired by the infamous Devil's Sea (魔の海 Ma no Umi?), also known as the Dragon's Triangle. Dragon's Triangle is a region of the Pacific around Miyake Island, about 100 km south of Tokyo. The size and area varies with the report (the only reports stem from the 1950s), with various reports placing it 70 miles (110 km) from an unspecified part of Japan's east coast, 300 miles (480 km) from the coast, and even near Iwo Jima, 750 miles (1,210 km) from the coast.(Kusche:259-260)

This area is said to be a danger zone on Japanese maps, according to Charles Berlitz's books The Bermuda Triangle (1974) and The Dragon's Triangle (1989). He states that in the peacetime years between 1952-54 Japan lost 5 military vessels with crews lost totalling over 700 people and that the Japanese government sent a research vessel boarded by over 100 scientists to study the Devil's Sea, and that this ship too vanished; and finally that the area was officially declared a danger zone.

According to Larry Kusche's investigation, these "military vessels" were fishing vessels, and some of them were lost outside the Devil's Sea, even as far as near Iwo Jima, 1000 km to the south. He also points out that, at that time, hundreds of fishing boats were lost around Japan every year.