Tsukiji: Big Fish out of Water

Stats have it that there’re almost a hundred centralized wholesale markets in 56 cities across Japan: 50-odd for fish, 19 for flowers, and 10 for meat. Tsukiji, here in Tokyo, is the heftiest of the lot; in fact it’s the biggest fish market in the world. Remember the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the U.S. government stores the Ark of the Covenant at the warehouse that stretches off into the horizon, without apparent end?

Tsukiji (東京都中央卸売市場) is just like that.

Also known as the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market and as “Tokyo’s Kitchen” - or more simply Tsukijishijo in Japanese - it everyday handles somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 to 2,900 metric tons of seafood, dabbling in over 400 varieties of aquatic vertebrate, crustaceans and cephalopods (this includes 300 kg slabs of tuna).

Employed to oversee the whole circus are around 65,000 people. This in effect makes Tsukiji the largest fish graveyard on the globe, as well as one of the bigger wholesale food markets in general.

It’s located near Ginza, just a quickie stroll from Tsukijishijo Station on the Toei Oedo Line or via the Hibiya Line’s Tsukiji Station.


Inside the market they have auctions in the wee hours, and the best time to be there is around 5:30am - though don’t wear your best footwear as parts of the place are awash in fish blood and hosed-down produce. It’s not really for the light-of-heart or vaguely animal rights-conscious, let alone people on the cusp of vegetarianism for ethical reasons, as you’re going to see a lot of sea creature carcasses, guts, squirming eels, and very big live craps tied in shoddy Gordian knots.

But you also get to witness people practicing their slice-and-dice techniques on both frozen and fresh tuna and swordfish, using intimidating sword-like shivs of their own that’re over a metre in length - just steer clear of the gas-powered go-carts and the guys lugging around huge blocks of ice, as they’re even more dangerous.

Set up early on in the 17th century by shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, this sprawling hub was originally a more humble affair located near Nihonbashi Bridge, not far from the current Tokyo Station.


But after the general destruction of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, the market was shifted to reclaimed land in the Tsukiji area - right next to a small Shinto shrine called Namiyoke Inari-jinja, built on the water’s edge of Tokyo Bay (before land was reclaimed from the sea to eventually house the market) in the mid 17th century.

Inari is apparently quite the chipper deity in Japan, with around 32,000 shrines (over a third of Shinto shrines in this country) dedicated to the Japanese kami of fertility, rice, agriculture, industry, worldly success - and foxes.

Thus the shrines are usually decked out with not only vermilion-coloured torii-gates, but also a bunch of statues of kitsune (foxes) who may or may not be messy eaters since they have bibs tied round their necks.

Namiyoke Inari-jinja itself also goes for much dragon and lion iconography, since the original attempts at land reclamation, commenced in the 17th century by the Tokugawa government, were often washed away in storms. When success was actually achieved, people celebrated by lugging round dragon floats - symbolizing control of the clouds - and a huge shishi lion’s head, renowned for its oddly calming roar that was probably aimed at virulent nature itself.


After the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market was relocated next door, Namiyoke Inari-jinja became the unofficial guardian shrine of the marketplace, and it’s dotted with memorial plaques and statuettes donated by several of the market’s trade groups.

In June every year, the shrine plays host to the rather wild Tsukiji Shishi Matsuri festival (see video below) which harks back to the original purpose of Namiyoke - lions, dragons, and all - and in turn underscores the more recent relationship with the neighbours, as many of the market’s traders are those people sweating under the mikoshi.



But Tsukiji isn’t just festivals, shrines and fish.

It was the star of the 2008 film Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime (築地魚河岸三代目, also known as Third Generation Tsukiji Fish Market Man or The Taste of Fish), directed by Shingo Matsubara of Ultraman: Tiga fame, and based on a 2000s manga series by Masaharu Nabeshima and Mitsuo Hashimoto; then again, the story here centers on a businessman who quits his high-flying bank job to work for his father-in-law at the fish market.

Tokyo’s Kitchen also pops up in the ‘90s manga version of Shota no Sushi (将太の寿司, Shota’s Sushi or King of Sushi) by Daisuke Terasawa, and - while I’m unsure if it appears in the live-action spin-off that played on Fuji TV in 1996 - I have it on good advice that the market features in Haikei, Chichiue-sama (拝啓、父上様), a.k.a. Dear Father, starring Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima, and the voice of Kuro in Tekkonkinkreet), which was broadcast on the same channel 11 years later.

大奥: The Lady Shogun and Her Men

One of my books when I was a kid was Stan Lee’s 1977 tome, The Superhero Women - which included a short tale of his, illustrated by John Romita, that previously appeared in Savage Tales #1 (1971).

‘The Fury of the Femizons’ featured a gynecocentric warrior society.

Yep, you read right: gynecocentric. Ahhh, the el cheapo thrills of an online thesaurus; for those without one, "gynocentrism" roughly acquaints to matriarchal and it's my new vocab discovery of the day - possibly good for use bamboozling posh and/or pretentious people at glad-bag dinner parties. Or not.

Anyway, in this particular society women call the shots while the men-folk are there merely to sit pretty and display a peck or two.

A similar theme was used in the 1977 second season of Space: 1999 in the episode ‘Devil’s Planet’, in which Commander Koenig crashes his Eagle on a planetary penal colony, where he finds himself the prisoner of the voluptuous Elizia and her equally S&M-inclined female prison guards.


The notion even shaped up an ongoing skit (‘The Worm That Turned’, 1980) in the British comedy The Two Ronnies... in which Mars Bars were hilariously rebranded Pa’s Bars.

Of course, Women’s Lib in the 1970s helped to shake up the conventional male/female wisdom personified in the ‘50s and Mad Men, and these days women do happen to run huge corporations and direct Oscar-winning films.

In Japan, however, things can be a little different.

Women’s Lib never actually took root here and at times the traditional Japanese family image resembles something like Leave It To Beaver – dad out earning a buck (as well as often drinking and carousing at yakitori bars at night) while mum's stuck in the kitchen and raising the kids; alternatively you can see many of them treating themselves at cake shops in Jiyugaoka with their erstwhile maternal mates.

While there have been matriarchal societies in the past in which women held sway over the men folk – even in fiercely patriarchal Japan – the last attempt here was probably the Empress Jingu in the 3rd century, though the historical veracity of her reign is these days contested anyway.

Not so surprising, really, when the Encyclopaedia Britannica notes that “aided by a pair of divine jewels that allowed her to control the tides, she is said to have begun her bloodless conquest of Korea in 200, the year in which her husband died.” The divine jewels sound like fun.

More recently succession to emperor has been regulated by the Japanese Diet (Parliament) and the current law excludes women from the the process.


Which brings us to the new Japanese movie The Lady Shogun and Her Men, titled more simply Ōoku (大奥) over here and released in cinemas last month.

If you look up Ōoku on Wikipedia you get this explanation: "The Ōoku refers to the harem of Edo Castle, the section where the women connected to the reigning Shōgun resided."

Directed by TV veteran Fuminori Kaneko, the film stars Kou Shibasaki (Battle Royale) as an alternate-reality 18th century shogun, and Arashi member Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters From Iwo Jima) as one of her gigolo-concubines, in a world decimated by an imagined disease that’s killed off most of the male population.

Think something a bit left-of-centre in shock/schlock value for local audiences.

It’s based on a more feminist, punchy manga by Yoshinaga Fumi (Ooku: The Inner Chambers) which had the smarts enough to win the 2009 James Tiptree Jr. Award for science fiction which expands or explores one's understanding of gender.

Yet this celluloid romp borders visually on an over-the-top J-Pop videoclip and while the script has all the hallmarks of a Japanese TV soapie (director Kaneko’s usual stomping ground), there are moments of fun and Shibasaki’s presence adds a deeper flavour.

For some of us, however, it feels like we’ve been here before – and honestly I think Ronnies Barker and Corbett did it better.




© 2010 The Lady Shogun and Her Men Film Partners

Tsukiji: Big Fish Out Of Water

Stats have it that there’re almost a hundred centralized wholesale markets in 56 cities across Japan: 50-odd for fish, 19 for flowers, and 10 for meat. Tsukiji, here in Tokyo, is the heftiest of the lot; in fact it’s the biggest fish market in the world. Remember the scene at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, when the U.S. government stores the Ark of the Covenant at the warehouse that stretches off into the horizon, without apparent end?

Tsukiji is just like that.

Also known as the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market and as “Tokyo’s Kitchen” - or more simply Tsukijishijo in Japanese - it everyday handles somewhere in the vicinity of 2,000 to 2,900 metric tons of seafood, dabbling in over 400 varieties of aquatic vertebrate, crustaceans and cephalopods (this includes 300kg slabs of tuna).

Employed to oversee the whole circus are around 65,000 people. This in effect makes Tsukiji the largest fish graveyard on the globe, as well as one of the bigger wholesale food markets in general.

It’s located near Ginza, just a brisk walk from Tsukijishijo Station on the Toei Oedo Line or alternatively the Hibiya Line’s Tsukiji Station.


Inside the market they have auctions in the wee hours, and the best time to be there is around 5:30am - though don’t wear your best footwear as parts of the place are awash in fish blood and hosed-down produce. It’s not really for the light-of-heart or vaguely animal rights-conscious, let alone people on the cusp of vegetarianism for ethical reasons, as you’re going to see a lot of sea creature carcasses, guts, squirming eels, and very big live craps tied in shoddy Gordian knots.

But you also get to witness people practicing their slice-and-dice techniques on both frozen and fresh tuna and swordfish, using intimidating sword-like shivs of their own that’re over a metre in length - just steer clear of the gas-powered go-carts and the guys lugging around huge blocks of ice, as they’re even more dangerous.

Set up early on in the 17th century by shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, this sprawling hub was originally a more humble affair located near Nihonbashi Bridge, not far from the current Tokyo Station.


But after the general destruction of the 1923 Great Kanto Earthquake, the market was shifted to reclaimed land in the Tsukiji area - right next to a small Shinto shrine called Namiyoke Inari-jinja, built on the water’s edge of Tokyo Bay (before land was reclaimed from the sea to eventually house the market) in the mid 17th century.

Inari is apparently quite the chipper deity in Japan, with around 32,000 shrines (over a third of Shinto shrines in this country) dedicated to the Japanese kami of fertility, rice, agriculture, industry, worldly success - and foxes.

Thus the shrines are usually decked out with not only vermilion-coloured torii-gates, but also a bunch of statues of kitsune (foxes) who may or may not be messy eaters since they have bibs tied round their necks.

Namiyoke Inari-jinja itself also goes for much dragon and lion iconography, since the original attempts at land reclamation, commenced in the 17th century by the Tokugawa government, were often washed away in storms. When success was actually achieved, people celebrated by lugging round dragon floats - symbolizing control of the clouds - and a huge shishi lion’s head, renowned for its oddly calming roar that was probably aimed at virulent nature itself.


After the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market was relocated next door, Namiyoke Inari-jinja became the unofficial guardian shrine of the marketplace, and it’s dotted with memorial plaques and statuettes donated by several of the market’s trade groups.

In June every year, the shrine plays host to the rather wild Tsukiji Shishi Matsuri festival, which harks back to the original purpose of Namiyoke - lions, dragons, and all - and in turn underscores the more recent relationship with the neighbours, as many of the market’s traders are those people sweating under the mikoshi.

But Tsukiji isn’t just festivals, shrines and fish.

It was the star of the 2008 film Tsukiji Uogashi Sandaime (築地魚河岸三代目, also known as Third Generation Tsukiji Fish Market Man or The Taste of Fish), directed by Shingo Matsubara of Ultraman: Tiga fame, and based on a 2000s manga series by Masaharu Nabeshima and Mitsuo Hashimoto; then again, the story here centers on a businessman who quits his high-flying bank job to work for his father-in-law at the fish market.

Tokyo’s Kitchen also pops up in the ‘90s manga version of Shota no Sushi (将太の寿司, Shota’s Sushi or King of Sushi) by Daisuke Terasawa, and - while I’m unsure if it appears in the live-action spin-off that played on Fuji TV in 1996 - I have it on good advice that the market features in Haikei, Chichiue-sama (拝啓、父上様), a.k.a. Dear Father, starring Kazunari Ninomiya (Letters from Iwo Jima, and the voice of Kuro in Tekkonkinkreet), which was broadcast on the same channel 11 years later.