Top Bid at New Year Tuna Auction in Tokyo only a Tenth of Last Year’s Price

The Yomiuri Shimbun

14:06 JST, January 5, 2021

The year’s first tuna auction at Toyosu Market was dampened by the slump in demand from restaurants amid the pandemic, with the top bid at just ¥20.84 million on Tuesday morning in Koto Ward, Tokyo.

The hatsuseri New Year auction fetched about ¥200 million in 2020 and over ¥300 million in 2019.

The Pacific bluefin tuna that sold at the highest price Tuesday was caught in waters off Oma, Aomori Prefecture, and weighed 208 kilograms, meaning it cost ¥100,000 per kilogram. It was among the 1,432 tuna at the auction, which started just after 5 a.m.

Yukitaka Yamaguchi, the president of Yamayuki, the fisheries intermediate wholesaler at the market that bought the tuna, said, “There is a lot of bad news about the novel coronavirus, so I hope people feel better after eating the most auspicious tuna.”