President of sushi restaurant chain Sushi-Zanmai, Kiyoshi Kimura (R), displays a 278kg bluefin tuna at his main restaurant in Tokyo on January 5, 2019.
Last week, restaurateur Kiyoshi Kimura paid a record-breaking $3.1 million for the first tuna sold in the new year at Tokyo’s brand new Toyosu Fish Market, which opened last October.
Every day, fishers, wholesalers, and the owners of Japan’s top sushi restaurants used to gather to buy and sell more than $21 million of the freshest fish in the world.
In recent decades, the market unexpectedly became one of Japan’s top tourists attractions. Thousands came to try to get a glimpse of the market’s world-famous tuna auction, where a single tuna once sold for $1.76 million.
Though Toyosu has improved refrigeration, earthquake resistance, and sanitation facilities, it isn’t the legendary Tsukiji Market.
I took a walk through before dawn at Tsukiji two years ago – when it was off-limits to tourists – to see what the iconic market was like in action.
You knew you had reached the jōnai-shijō when you started seeing signs like this. While the wholesale market opened at 3:00 a.m., tourists weren’t allowed in until after 10:00 a.m. But business was all but done by then, so I went about 5:00 a.m.
The market was a busy workplace. These trolleys whizzed down every alleyway at full speed, carrying boxes of fish from dealer to dealer. You needed to be on your toes. The fishmongers wouldn’t slow down for wandering tourists.
Tsukiji Market was first established in 1935, but the tradition of riverside fish markets, or “Uogashi,” dates to 16th-century Japan. At the time, the first Tokugawa shogun, Ieyasu, gave fishers the right to fish so long as they supplied food to Edo Castle. Fishers would sell leftover fish at a market near the river.
The market became one of the top tourist attractions in Japan, but it wasn’t intended that way. It was a place for business. Restaurant and market owners came every day to pick the choicest pieces of seafood for their business.
There were some 900 licensed wholesalers crammed into the inner market. Each had a small stall from which to do business. It looked like they do all their order taking and accounting by hand.
In back, I found a little store where fishmongers could buy snacks, newspapers, and even supplies for cleaning fish.
More fish passed through Tsukiji than any other market in the world. Some estimates suggest that the market did more than $4 billion in business a year.
Fish were brought to the wholesalers packed in Styrofoam boxes. The fish were then cleaned and put out for sale.
The real star of the market was the Pacific bluefin tuna, considered in Japan to be the “king of sushi.” It seemed like at least half of the fishmongers’ stalls were cutting, cleaning, or preparing bluefin tuna. Commercial fishing has diminished the species to dangerously low levels.
The most famous part of the market was the tuna auction, which happened daily at about 3:00 a.m. Only 120 visitors could view the auction each day. Most bluefin tuna sells for between $2,000 and $20,000, depending on the size and the fat and oil content, which determines the taste of the fish.
Wholesalers check the quality of fresh tuna displayed at the Tsukiji fish market before the New Year’s auction in Tokyo, January 5, 2017.
The New Year’s auction was a major event, with bidders paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to win the best tuna. Hiroshi Onodera, the owner of restaurant and food-service company LEOC, won the final New Year’s auction at the original Tsukiji site last week, paying $323,000 for an 890-pound tuna.
Kiyomura Co.’s president. Kiyoshi Kimura, center, who runs a chain of sushi restaurants Sushi Zanmai, poses with a $633,000, 467-pound bluefin tuna at his sushi restaurant outside Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, January 5, 2017.
The New Year’s tradition has continued at Toyosu. Kiyoshi Kimura, who owns a chain of sushi restaurants in Japan, won the first New Year’s auction at Toyosu. He paid $3.1 million for a 613-pound tuna.
Kimura had won the auction for six years running before 2018. His $3.1 million tuna broke record price he paid in 2013 when spent $1.76 million on a 489-pound tuna.
Kiyomura Co.’s employee holds the head of a 222 kg (489 lbs) bluefin tuna that sold for a record $1.76 million USD after cutting its meat at the company’s sushi restaurant outside Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo, January 5, 2013.
The tuna in Tsukiji and the new market is delivered all over the world frozen or on ice less than 24 hours after being caught. Then the fishmongers have to clean and defrost the giant fish.
Next up is cutting the massive tuna into small pieces with a bandsaw. The market was a very noisy place, full of rumbling trucks, yelling fishmongers, and the constant buzz and screech of saws cutting through fish.
The wholesalers then cut the tuna into sellable pieces for the top sushi restaurants in the city. Some wholesalers will even massage the fish or have conversations with it as they cut.
All that’s left are the discarded fish guts. Yum.
By the end of the work day, there were a lot of Styrofoam boxes. A forklift carted the boxes away.
Seriously, I had to watch out for the scooters. The fishmongers have no time or patience for tourists.
After I was done touring, I went to one of the sushi joints in the main market for a kaisendon, or sushi-rice bowl. It was the best sushi I’ve ever had.