In the final New Year’s auction at Tokyo’s famed Tsukiji Market yesterday, the owner of an international sushi restaurant shelled out more than US$300,000 for a prime bluefin tuna and said he was “very happy” with the result.
The world’s largest fish market, one of Tokyo’s most popular tourist sites, is set to relocate later this year to clear the way for a road needed for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Hiroshi Onodera, the president of LEOC Co Ltd, which owns the Ginza Onodera restaurant chain, paid ¥36.45 million (US$322,218) for a 405kg premium Pacific bluefin tuna — about ¥90,000 per kilogram.
Photo: Reuters
The price was just more than half that of last year’s winning bid of ¥72 million and well short of the record ¥155 million paid in 2013.
“I’ve tried to win in the auction since last year, so I’m really happy,” said Onodera, whose company has restaurants in New York and Singapore, as well as in Japan.
“This is especially true, because it’s the last year in Tsukiji,” he added.
Tuna is prized around the world for its use in sushi, but experts warn growing demand has made it an endangered species.
“The high price paid today for a single Pacific bluefin tuna should not distract from the dire status of the species, which has been depleted by more than 97 percent by years of overfishing,” Pew Charitable Trusts Pacific bluefin tuna expert Jamie Gibbon said in a statement. “If countries continue to exceed their catch limits ... the very survival of the species will be threatened.”
The 80-year-old Tsukiji Market draws tens of thousands of visitors each year to its warren of stalls with exotic species of fish and fresh sushi, part of a tourism boom that is a key part of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s economic revival plan.
“This will truly be the final auction here, so I made sure I came to watch,” 61-year-old seafood store owner Mitsuko Yamaguchi said.
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