

Some background: ZUN released the full version of [Touhou
9](https://en.touhouwiki.net/wiki/Phantasmagoria_of_Flower_View) at Comiket 68
on August 14, 2005.

The premise of the story is that the protagonists are investigating an
abnormally high number of blooming flowers. At the end of the story, they find
out that the flowers are blooming because of a sudden spike in the number of
deaths. It's also revealed that a similar flower incident occurred 60 years
ago. Perhaps coincidentally, perhaps not, this happens to line up with events
from the end of World War II in 1945 (including the [Battle of
Okinawa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Okinawa) and the [atomic
bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_and_Nagasaki)).

If this isn't a coincidence, then this might imply that there was another
event with a large death toll in 2005. So my question is: Was there a specific
event in real life in 2005 that ZUN might have been referencing?


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question
touhou-project
Does Touhou 9: Phantasmagoria of Flower View reference a specific real world event in 2005?