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© KYODOFishery businesses voice concerns about future of Tsukiji market
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Aly Rustom
And the witch hunt begins for Koike with everyone convienently forgetting this is Ishihara's debacle.
Alex Einz
Koike is absolutely the worst leader this city ever had.. she is incapable of making any decision,I see absolutely nothing she accomplished besides costing taxpayers millions..
She is taking the burden of olympic costs from saitama,chiba e.t.c.. for some strange reason and the tsukiji is costing millions a day and she still cant make one simple decision...
leader job is to lead and make uncomfortable decisions for greater good, she is clearly showing that she is unable to do that and can only bicker around
get rid of her before this city becomes a disaster
pacint
Sure, let's have Ishihara-San again who started this mess in 2001.
All because he wanted a good bid for the Olympics with the Tsukiji Communication Centre.
Schopenhauer
Koike took an easy method to make everybody happy (?) That is add two and divide in half. She is a populist. People do not eat fish very much in today's Japan. I do not understand why the metropolitan government has to spend so much money for a fish market. Let them take care themselves.
ClippetyClop
Nonsense. After China they are the 2nd biggest consumers in the world. Ever heard of sushi?
AgentX
That's right... of a dwindling resource rarely pulled from Japanese waters. If Japan can't learn to adapt to realities and move with the times, there are even bigger problems on the horizon for them.
Schopenhauer
Have you checked prices of fish at supermarkets? Meats are cheaper than fish and sushi are luxurious thing for many Japanese and not daily foods for commoners. Fish handled at Tsukiji are expensive ones and purchased by expensive sushi restaurants. We commoners will not be in trouble without Tsukiji or Toyosu.
ClippetyClop
I'm afraid this is wrong too! My local izakayas buy fresh fish from Tsukiji, about 100km from Tokyo. They're not high end places. Fact is, fish from the Tokyo market ends up on people's plates
drlucifer
I don't eat sushi , wish I was able to eat fish frequently and not once in three months
like I do now because of the astronomical cost.
kolohe
For those who believe that Tsukiji is for sushi restaurants, they are misinformed. Many izakaya, other restaurants and ordinary supermarkets rely on Tsukiji for their supply of seafood for the everyday person.
kohakuebisu
This "solution" strikes me as moving to the polluted site in spite of the obvious health concerns while partially remaining at the original historic brand-name site so that they can pretend that they have not moved to the polluted site regardless.
Selling/reusing the original site was supposed to pay for the move, so we now have a kludge that will involve further costs and still involve lots of the seafood eaten throughout Japan passing through a facility built on contaminated land. I respect Koike for holding up the move and ordering more testing, but it appears that the results of the tests are now being ignored. I would have expected any announcement to press on with the move to Toyosu to come with some info on how they are going to make Toyosu safe. Even if its just some fantasy techno thing like the underground ice wall at Fukushima Dai Ichi.
lucabrasi
@kohaku
Thank you for saying exactly what I've been thinking since yesterday evening, but haven't found the energy to type. It's all just too depressing : (
viking68
The current group of restaurants around Tsukiji should not suffer because of the move.
Obvious health concerns?
Fix the site (if it is even needed) instead of treating it like there are a bunch of ghosts living there and who won't leave.
The sooner any issues are cleared up, the better. Because, the market will move.
Koike needs to make decisions rather than issue ideas. Not making decisions costs taxpayers a lot of money.
Brian Wheway
I don't think that Yuriko san is doing a bad job, what most people forget is that she has inherited a mess, and you just can't just wave a magic wand, and its going to be alright, it takes time, she has to understand what problems she has been left with, what and how to sort it out, and what is the best way forward, and this just can't be done in 5 minutes, what would people say if she rushed into the wrong decision?
fxgai
I looked into this because it strikes me as crazy as well.
Apparently the Central Wholesale Markets Law was enacted around 1920s in response to 'rice riots' in 1918.
It would appear there were some problematic things occurring in the market for rice as a result of a fairly rapid increase in rice prices at the time.
But the Law enacted in response appears to have been a massive government overreach. Instead of just outlawing the detrimental market behavior, the law also put it upon local governments to establish and manage food markets. Rather than just govern / regulate them.
Another thing I discovered is that the law created privilege for wholesale operators by fixing the commission rates they receive - government should not create protected interest groups like this. It ought to be that buyers and sellers simply come together through mutual cooperation and agree to a price by themselves. guaranteed commissions set by government are a cost worn by consumers.
Another thing is that the lack of competition between markets implied by Tokyo running the Tsukiji show means that it's the only game in town. Were there 2 competing markets, and one was working out of polluted premises, consumers could opt to buy from the competing market. Not possible here.
It is now way too late for a revision of this law to fix the debacle here, but unless this Law is revised we can be sure it will be the source of more huge problems again sometime in future. We would all do better with a more modern Law.