Stepping from the pre-dawn darkness into Tokyo’s newly built Toyosu fish market, a bluefin-tuna buyer named Kiyoshi Kimura walks the glossy green floors. He weaves between rows of silver-bellied, gape-mouthed maguro, or bluefin, some weighing hundreds of pounds. In his hand, he holds a plastic flashlight, which he’ll shine through the flesh of each fish—the green backdrop makes it easier to evaluate their quality—before smearing the samples between his fingertips.
Today, the temperature-controlled auction floor teems with schooling groups of men on cell phones, each wearing knee-high rubber boots and a baseball hat punctuated with a numbered bidding placard of white or yellow plastic. Some carry wooden-handled or metal gaffs, designed for grabbing and dragging huge fish across the slick ground. To a bystander, it might look chaotic, but this is the daily ballet that occurs here at Toyosu, the world’s largest and most lucrative market for fresh bluefin tuna.
