KEY POINTS:
For a nation that consumes one-third of the world's fish, few areas of Japan are as symbolic as Tsukiji.
The giant fish market in the heart of Tokyo is the most important 230,000sq m on Japan's culinary map, probably handling 20 times more fish a year than New
York's Fulton Fish market and London's Billingsgate combined. Everything from minke whale to sea urchins passes across its slippery floors.
But if the Government has its way, toxic chemicals will soon be seeping into all that glistening fresh meat.
That at least is what critics say will happen if they don't block a plan to relocate the 72-year-old market to a site built on reclaimed land a couple of kilometres away.
Once owned by Tokyo Gas, the site on a wharf in Toyosu near Tokyo Bay squats on ground soil contaminated by a cocktail of toxic effluent from the company's plants. Not surprisingly, Tsukiji's wholesalers and traders are up in arms.
"This is an outrage that gives no consideration to food safety," said wholesaler Takashi Saito at a press conference hosted by opponents of the plan.
It is not difficult to understand their concern. There are few places in the world that handle as much raw meat, a good deal of which stays raw, as sushi and sashimi, all the way into millions of Japanese mouths. The thought of arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium and benzene, all of which have been detected at dangerously high levels on the Tokyo Bay site, anywhere near that food is, well, stomach-churning.
Even plans to add meters of fresh top-soil, pave the site with asphalt and put the fish on an elevated floor before the move in 2012 have failed to convince vendors. Some warn that an earthquake could shift the ground under the site, sending polluted groundwater into the nation's fish basket.
"If the Big One hits Tokyo and the reclaimed land under Toyosu liquefies, toxic substances could surface" tuna wholesaler Makoto Nozue told the Asahi newspaper recently.
In a country with one of the lowest food self-sufficiency rates in the developed world, the vendors take enormous pride in their role as gatekeepers to Japan's households and restaurants. So it is ironic that the man behind the plan is one of the country's most famous nationalists.
Tokyo's right-wing governor, Shintaro Ishihara, ignored a majority vote against the relocation by the giant trading organisation the Wholesales Co-operatives of Tokyo Fish Market and a 120-000-strong petition collected by opponents. If he has his way venerable old Tsukiji will be turned into a flash new media centre for the proposed 2016 Olympics.
Most people accept that the market has to be rebuilt. About 60,000 people work under its leaky roof and hundreds of forklifts and light trucks careen dangerously across bumpy, slippery floors.
Men can still be seen licking pencils before putting them to scraps of paper and a new computer would die of loneliness.
Most days, foreign tourists can be seen gawking in awe at the controlled bedlam that somehow manages to feed the nation.
But the small businesses that dominate the opposition to the relocation plan fear they won't survive the move.
Many are run by second and third-generation owners hit hard by large supermarket chains and wholesalers, which have eaten into their businesses by dealing directly with the ports and fish farms that supply Tsukiji's product.
"They're fighting a losing war ... Tsukiji is getting old and the Tokyo government will not reverse itself," says the owner of a frozen seafood firm.
Fare deal
* Tsukiji is the biggest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world.
* It handles more than 2000 tonnes of seafood a day.
* It features more than 400 different types of seafood.
* In the licensed wholesale inner market, auctions and most of the processing of the fish take place.
* About 900 licensed wholesale dealers operate stalls.
* The outer market is a mixture of wholesale and retail shops and restaurants.
- INDEPENDENT
