Highest bidder pays nearly £240,000 for a giant tuna at last new year auction before relocation of Tokyo market later this year

This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

Tokyo’s world-famous Tsukiji fish market has held its last new year auction before closing down for relocation, with the highest bidder paying nearly £240,000 for a giant tuna.



After more than 80 years in operation, the world’s biggest fish market, a popular tourist attraction in an area packed with restaurants and shops, is expected to move to Toyosu, a former gas plant to the east of the current site, next October.

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The market, which opened in 1935, is best known for its daily pre-dawn auctions of tuna, for use by everyone from top Michelin-star sushi chefs to ordinary grocery stores.

Before dawn on Friday, buyers in rubber boots inspected the quality of the giant fresh and frozen tunas by examining the neatly cut tail end with flashlights and rubbing slices between their fingers.

At 5.30am, auctioneers rang handbells to signal the start of the auction and buyers began a flurry of bidding with hand signals for their preferred tunas.

The highest bidder, whose name was not revealed, paid 36.5m yen (£238,000) for a tuna weighing more than 400kg caught off northern Aomori prefecture, according to the market.

“We have to continue the Tsukiji brand and establish a new brand [at the new site],” Shigeo Yokota, the representative of buyers, said in his new year speech. “I’m proud to be standing here at this historic moment.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest People pose for photos with a 405kg bluefin tuna, centre, outside Tsukiji fish market on Friday. Photograph: Toru Hanai/Reuters

The Tsukiji market handles 480 kinds of seafood daily, worth £10m, as well as 270 types of fruits and vegetables, and has fed Japan’s hunger for fresh seafood since its opening.

But in recent years the antiquated facility has prompted its users to voice concerns about its earthquake resistance, sanitation and fire safety, as well as asbestos in its crumbling walls.

They have also called for upgraded technology, such as better refrigeration systems.

But the move, originally scheduled for late 2016, was also loudly opposed by various businesses that operate at or around the market, an extremely popular attraction located within walking distance from the Ginza shopping district.

Many businesses were emotionally attached to the Tsukiji brand as well as the location, which also had problems with soil contamination as it formerly housed a dry cleaning plant before the market was built.

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Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, put the relocation plan on hold shortly after being elected the city’s first female governor in 2016.

She then found a series of problems with the new site in Toyosu, including soil and groundwater contamination, and discovered that contractors had failed to fill in a basement at the new site with clean soil as a buffer against underground pollution.

The local government paid hundreds of millions of dollars to clean up the new facility and Koike took the final decision to move the market last month, ending years of delays.

Tsukiji’s wholesalers had voiced frustration over the delay, arguing that postponing the move was costing them millions of dollars a month.

In 2013, Kiyoshi Kimura, Japan’s self-styled “tuna king”, who owns a sushi restaurant chain, paid a record $1.8m (£1.3m) for a bluefin – a threatened species – outbidding a rival from Hong Kong.

In 2017, he paid more than $600,000 (£440,000) for a 212kg bluefin tuna at the first auction of the new year.