Photo/Illutration Octopus on sale at a fish market in Sanriku, Miyagi Prefecture, in December 2021 (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

Man is compared to a thinking reed, “ashi” in Japanese while the humble octopus is often likened to thinking legs, also “ashi” in Japanese, due to its cleverness.

The octopus has eight limbs. Or wait, are they arms? I looked for an answer in Aristotle’s “History of Animals,” and there it was: An octopus “uses its tentacles both as feet and as hands.”

The price of octopus is said to be rising. According to the internal affairs ministry’s retail price statistics for September, this soft-bodied mollusk fetched 507 yen per 100 grams in Tokyo’s 23 wards, which made it more expensive than not only prawn and yellowtail, but even tuna.

You too, octopus? I can imagine hearing people lamenting, “What’s going to happen to popular “takoyaki” street food octopus dumplings?”

The presumed cause of the rising price is global growth in demand. Long gone are the days when octopus was shunned as “the devil fish.” People around the world seem to have come to recognize it as a delicacy.

I don’t like the soaring prices at all, but the situation must be much more repugnant to octopuses that are being hunted and eaten more.

Called the “wise one of the sea,” the octopus developed its own kind of intelligence. Arms folded and legs crossed, it must be bemoaning the voracious appetites of two-legged animals.

I recall the times when the price of eel and Pacific saury skyrocketed and upset many people.

On the other hand, we also happen to live in a consumer society where massive amounts of unsold seafood at supermarkets are trashed at night. Can’t we deal with nature a bit more wisely?

“I’d like to be under the sea/ In an octopus’s garden/ In the shade” go the lyrics of The Beatles’ famous “Octopus’s Garden.”

What is being tested now is not the intelligence of the wise one of the sea, but our intelligence.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 9

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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