Tsukiji Fish Market

The camera stands on the wet concrete in the middle of the floor and the fish go out from it in every direction - hundreds of frozen tuna, tails off, laid in rows on the bare ground with numbered paper tags stuck to their flanks and a slice cut near the tail so the meat can be seen. They are enormous and they are all the same colour, a hard frosted white, which makes the whole floor read as one surface until you pick out an individual. Buyers move down the rows in ones and twos with hand torches and short hooks, crouching, scraping a little of the cut with a thumbnail and rubbing it. The hall itself is plain and functional: painted concrete columns with numbers on them, strip lights, roller shutters, pipework. Nobody is looking at the camera. This is work.

The Tsukiji Fish Market in Tokyo is the largest wholesale fish market in the world, handling more than 2,000 tons of seafood every day. It provides fish and seafood for the hundreds of caterers, restaurants, and home cooks who visit the market every day, and it is also a popular attraction for tourists who come to see the work behind one of the biggest features of Japanese cuisine.

The Tsukiji Fish Market consists of an inner wholesale market where fish, tuna, and other seafood are sold, as well as an outer market that specializes in dried fish, seaweed, condiments, and razor-sharp Japanese knives. One of the top attractions of the inner fish market is the tuna auction that takes place every morning at 5, where gigantic whole tuna, many of which are as large as a full-grown adult, are auctioned off to Tokyo’s top fish purveyors. Unfortunately, the tuna auction is now closed to tourists, due to the problems of dealing with a large number of unauthorized visitors and perhaps the controversy surrounding fishing of the bluefin tuna as well.

Nevertheless, a visit to the other wholesale fish areas of the Tsukiji Fish Market is fascinating. Thousands of fish, eels, sea urchins, shellfish, sea cucumbers, and piles of gleaming fish roe are laid out on trays of crushed ice or displayed swimming in tanks of water, ready for purchase. Fish sellers here display their dexterity as they skin eels and gut fish at a lightning-fast pace. Tourists are more or less amiably tolerated by the workers at the fish market, but are asked to be considerate and to move out of the way when forklifts and other vehicles come whizzing by.

After visitors have bought their supply of fresh fish in the inner market, the outer market is the next stop for essential goods such as kilos of freshly shaved bonito, rolls of dried seaweed, dried anchovies and minnows, fresh vegetables, and other important ingredients. In the outer market there are also dozens of excellent sushi restaurants that serve the freshest sushi you can find in Tokyo, at bargain prices, an ideal stop for a sashimi lunch before continuing with the business of the day.