FISH MART HITS STORMY WATERS
Popular with tourists and locals alike, the Japanese capital’s seafood market was meant to be on the move – but not without trawler-loads of controversy
THE impending relocation of Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market, the largest in the world, has hit a roadblock owing to contamination at the new site and a series of political errors that could take a toll on tourism and the traders.
Thousands of foreign tourists and locals flock daily to the rundown alleys of the market filled with fish vendors and restaurants displaying more than 450 native species of fish, shellfish, molluscs and other fresh and processed produce. But it seems that the days of this market at its central location between the Ginza neighbourhood and the Sumida River, where it has been for the past eight decades, are numbered.
As part of the renovation of Tokyo before the 2020 Olympic Games and amid a tourism boom, the government decided to move the market to Toyosu, an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, near the Olympic Village, where it will have larger and more modern facilities.
The project has provoked opposition from the tourists, local people and workers that has only grown with a series of complications and failures in management. The relocation, scheduled for November, has been pushed back indefinitely.
The detection of toxic substances in the water under the new site – from a former plant of Tokyo Gas – and its possible impact on the market has also caused much public concern.
Tsudoi Fukuhara, the owner of a shop selling tamagoyaki (Japanese omelet), said he was concerned about the contamination at the site.
The new site has also been criticised for its remote location – it is located about 2km east of the present location, although it is connected by metro – and its industrial exterior.