Tsukiji’s last New Year auction

A 200kg bluefin tuna sold for 14 million yen ($117,706) on Tuesday at the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market.

Bluefin is usually the most expensive fish available at Tsukiji, the biggest fish and wholesale seafood market in the world.

The tuna was caught off the coast of Oma, in Aomori prefecture, north of Japan.

Tsukiji, the biggest fish market in the world, whose predawn auctions are a popular tourist attraction, outgrew its current premises years ago. That’s probably because this was the last New Year’s auction in Tsukiji.

“In recent years, the economic situation surrounding the market has been tough, but we are grateful to Tsukiji for the past 80 years”.

Tuesday’s auction victor, Kiyoshi Kimura, president of the firm behind the popular Sushi-Zanmai restaurant chain, said he was “glad to make a winning bid in the last New Year auction at Tsukiji”. Its price was more than treble that of the 2014 New Year’s auction prize catch, but it was not record-breaking.

The closure of the Tsukiji market will punctuate the end of the post-war era for numerous mom-and-pop shops just outside the main market that peddle a cornucopia of sea-related products, from dried squid and seaweed to whale bacon and caviar.

“We shall give our gratitude to Tsukiji and do our best for the year”.

Market move slowed by serious snag..

The move has been delayed twice, though, after toxins were discovered in soil at the new location, the former site of a coal gasification plant. But cleanup work dragged on, and in 2013, Tokyo Gas disclosed it had found more contamination. Critics say the new development looks like a shopping mall, but supporters say the old market was unhygienic and risky given that it wasn’t made to accommodate all the tourists who flock to it.

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