Sushi entrepreneur pays record 510.3m yen for giant bluefin in Tokyo

Kiyoshi Kimura, who styles himself the "Tuna King", paid a record 510.3m yen (£2.4m) for a 243kg bluefin tuna at a new-year auction in Tokyo’s main fish market.

Kimura said after the pre-dawn auction: "I’d thought we would be able to buy a little cheaper but the price soared before you knew it. I was surprised at the price. I hope that by eating auspicious tuna, as many people as possible will feel energised." The 510.3m yen figure is the highest since comparable data began being collected in 1999; the previous record was 333.6m yen for a 278kg bluefin in 2019 after the market moved from its traditional Tsukiji area to a more modern facility. The top bidder last year paid 207m yen for a 276kg bluefin.

Shortly after the auction the tuna was butchered and turned into sushi for Kimura’s restaurant chain, selling for about 500 yen a roll. "I feel like I’ve begun the year in a good way after eating something so auspicious as the year starts," 19-year-old Minami Sugiyama told Agence France-Presse. Fellow customer Kiyoshi Nishimura, a 40-year-old Shinto priest, said: "Even without dipping it in soy sauce, there’s sweetness. And the richness, the texture – it just makes you feel happy."

New year tunas commanded only a fraction of their usual top prices during the pandemic as restaurants scaled back operations.

Key Topics

World, Kiyoshi Kimura, Tokyo, Tsukiji, Bluefin Tuna