An 892 pound (405 kilogram) bluefin tuna has sold for 36.5 million yen ($320,000) in what may really be Tsukiji market’s last auction at its current site in downtown Tokyo, local media reports said Friday.
TOKYO — An 892 pound (405 kilogram) bluefin tuna has sold for 36.5 million yen ($320,000) in what may really be Tsukiji market’s last auction at its current site in downtown Tokyo, local media reports said Friday.
The winning bid for the prized but threatened species at the predawn auction was well below the record 155.4 million yen bid at 2013’s annual New Year auction. It amounts to about 90,000 yen ($798) per kilogram and was paid by a local wholesaler, the reports said.
This year’s top per kilogram price, for a smaller tuna, was $1,419 per kilogram, compared with about $7,930 per kilogram for the 2013 record-setting auction price, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun and other local media reported. That price was paid by Kiyomura Corp., whose owner Kiyoshi Kimura runs the Sushi Zanmai chain, the reports said. Kimura has often won the annual auction in the past.
The reports said the top priced tuna was one of the biggest ever sold at the auction.
Last year’s New Year auction was supposed to be the last at Tsukiji’s current location, as was the New Year auction the year before.
