Photo/Illutration Intermediary wholesalers bid over prized bluefin tunas at the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market on Jan. 5. (Shinnosuke Ito)

A bluefin tuna caught off the coast of Oma, Aomori Prefecture, fetched 36.04 million yen ($270,000), the top price at the first auction of the year at Tokyo’s Toyosu fish market on Jan. 5.

The 212-kilogram fish cost more than twice the price of the most expensive fish sold at last year’s auction, 16.88 million yen for a 211-kg bluefin also caught off Oma.

The two fish weigh nearly the same, but the price per kg jumped to 170,000 yen this year from 80,000 yen last year.

Toyosu intermediary wholesaler Yamayuki won the fish at the request of the high-end sushi restaurant Ginza Onodera.

This is the third year in a row Yamayuki won the most expensive bluefin tuna at the market’s first auction of the year, but it came nowhere close to the record.

Kiyomura Corp., which runs the sushi restaurant chain Sushizanmai, stunned the world when it paid 333.6 million yen for a single bluefin tuna in 2019.

However, bids for the prize fish of the year significantly slunk back during the pandemic, when the restaurant industry slumped.

Yamayuki and Kiyomura duke it out nearly every year at the auction for the best tuna, a highly coveted prize as it is a sign of good luck.

Their high-stakes rivalry started before the market was moved from the Tsukiji district in the capital’s Chuo Ward to its current site in Koto Ward.

Only five wholesalers put up bluefin tunas for auction at Toyosu after buying them from fishermen around the world.

Each wholesaler has its own designated expert who ranks their company’s bluefins, and then put “No. 1” tags on their top tuna before placing them at the far end of the auction site.

The five best bluefins are always the main attraction at the market’s first auction of the year, and this year, each company chose bluefins caught off Oma as the top choice.

The five top tunas this year were: a 136-kg fish from Dai-Ichi Suisan Co.; a 206.4-kg one from Tsukiji Uoichiba Co.; a 123.8-kg one from Daito Gyorui Co.; a 212-kg one from Tohto Suisan Co.; and a 207.4-kg one from Chuogyorui Co.

Yukitaka Yamaguchi, the president of Yamayuki, began researching bluefin catches just after Christmas Day and learned on New Year’s Eve that an unusually excellent bluefin tuna was caught off Oma, and that the Tohto Suisan wholesaler had gotten ahold of the 212-kg fish.

On Jan. 4, the eve of the first auction, Yamayuki and Ginza Onodera held their last strategy meeting before the auction.

Yamaguchi told people from Ginza Onodera at the meeting that he believed the top-prized bluefin tuna would be won at the price of between 30 million yen and 40 million yen.

The bidding over the fish attracted a lot of attention.

Before the action started, even intermediary wholesalers not bidding for the top-tier bluefins gathered around the prized 212-kg tuna.

The first auction started at 5:10 a.m. on Jan. 5 with the customary sound of a handbell.

Yamayuki swiftly won the fish. When the company offered a bid of 170,000 yen per kg for the prized tuna, all its rivals withdrew.

Yamaguchi said he believes that this was the only fish worthy of fetching top dollar since all the other contenders were caught one week earlier.

Related News