It’s the epicenter of sushi, the slimy storehouse of prized tuna and pie-eyed tourists in Tokyo: the Tsukiji fish market. And it will shortly be moving from its cosmopolitan locale to a climate-controlled distribution center on a manufactured island, according to a story in the New York Times.
The world’s largest fish market, Tsukiji occupies prime development land desired by city planners for the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. But the move, estimated at $4.5 billion, is yet another blow to a vanishing way of life, preservationists contend.
Hiroshige Utagawa’s mid-19th-century take on a bustling Japanese fish market.
The 78-year-old market is the place where fishmongers haggle at predawn with sushi chefs over the freshest fish, sliced right on the spot. It’s also one of the top tourist destinations, where gawkers come to look their upcoming meals in the eye and duck into adjacent, tumbledown sushi joints for an early-morning protein boost like no other. For Japanese artists like Hiroshige Utagawa, the antiseptic environs of a fish superstore hardly seems inspiring.