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| Pictured: Several hundred thousand yen, or about nine dollars American. |
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| Above: the Tokyo fish market, where chefs traditionally pay top dollar for raw fish that's just lying around on the floor. |
This particular example of the kind of conspicuous consumption that's pushing the world ever closer to violent class wars, happened at the first auction of the New Year at the also new location of the Tsukiji fish market in Tokyo. This market has been a thing for almost a hundred years and it's where Japanese restauranteurs bid on freshly caught seafood in the wee hours of the morning while tourists take pictures and marvel at something they can see in any other port city on Earth. Crazy expensive fish aren't a new thing for the market but three million goddamn dollars is a new record.
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| Pictured: Kimura, posing with his tuna and the sword he used to discourage rival bids. Yeah, this auction is basically Thunderdome with fish. |
The winner winner of this fish dinner is Kyoshi Kimura, the owner of a chain of sushi restaurants who also calls himself the Tuna King. This year he doubled the previous record set by him in 2013. He had this to say to the Associated Foreign Press:
"The price was higher than originally thought, but I hope our customers will eat this excellent tuna."
-His Majesty Kyoshi Kimura,
King of Tuna and Lord High
Chancellor of understatement
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| In the wild they're a unitary state with a bicameral legislature. |
So first of all, I'm pretty sure tuna are fish and don't actually have a king. And even if they did, I'm not sure they'd recognize the sovereign authority of someone who serves them as sashimi. Secondly, of course he'd better hope someone will eat the tuna he just paid three million dollars for. According to my extensive research (yes, I googled it), raw tuna is good for about a day or two, so not only does he need sushi fans to eat his excellent tuna, he needs them to do it soon. Like today. Before it starts to stink up the place.
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| Although unlike America, in Japan, one probably doesn't have to put up with white dudes explaining the proper way to eat sushi. |
According to this, the six hundred and twelve pound bluefin worked out to something like five thousand dollars per pound and will yield twelve thousand pieces of sushi. Which, if I'm doing my math right is like two hundred and fifty dollars per piece. And that's assuming sushi chefs work for free. Which, they probably don't, but I have no idea what the mark up on sushi is. Anyway I assume Japan is just like America in that there are enough rich idiots willing to pay that much for something just because they can, but still. Goddamn.
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| "Replenish their what? Sorry, I couln't hear you over the sound of gutting this incredibly valuable and endangered fish" |
But scarcity and the value that comes along with it is at the very heart of capitalism, right? And this is like, super scarce. That blue fin Kimura just over paid for is on the threatened species list and regulations put into place last year set maximums on how may can be caught. The idea being that the bluefin needs time to replenish its numbers. And that makes sense right? And it follows that the more rare a fish is the more it's going to cost so that explains why King Tuna just dropped three million-with an 'm'-dollars on one.
What I want to know is how is anything short of a ban is not going to just like, encourage more fishing? Like the fine for exceeding the quota is two million yen, which is like twenty thousand dollars. But if a single bluefin could potentially go for millions why not, you know, risk the fine and hope you strike it big? The fewer the fish the more the money so the fewer the fish. It's a cycle. A vicious, delicious fishes cycle.
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| "Let's see, that's one fish, two fish, red fish-wait, that's just a shoe. Looks like we're down to just the two fish..."
-Some fisherman
in the near future
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