Tsukiji was doomed, surely. Its raison d’etre, its entire reason for being, had disappeared.
The Tsukiji fish market, the world’s largest wholesale fish and seafood space – and surely the world’s most famous – closed its doors and pulled down its awnings for the final time on October 11, 2018. Its many vendors and workers shifted their operations to Toyosu, a gleaming, modern facility in southern Tokyo.
The Tsukiji outer market in Tokyo is thriving despite the departure of the fish market.Credit: Alamy
Gone was the bustle in Tsukiji, gone was the produce, gone was the icon. It stood to reason that the Tsukiji outer market, the rickety network of shops and stalls that existed as an annex of the main complex, a place for workers to eat and visitors to pick up kitchen supplies, would surely cease to exist as well.
Indeed, many vendors left, making their way to Toyosu with the main market. The outer market’s demise seemed inevitable.
And yet here we are today, shoulder to shoulder on a packed street in Tsukiji, queuing for grilled wagyu, pushing through crowds to get to knife makers, marvelling at the place’s success.
A yakitori stall at the outer market.Credit: Alamy
“There was a massive clamour for the lottery to get a space in the new market,” says Tyler Palma, the global head of operations for tour company InsideJapan, and a Tokyo resident. “Whether you’re a restaurant, a knife shop, there were limited spaces at Toyosu, and they all got put in a lottery.
“The ones who got the spaces in the new market almost thought they’d won the lottery in the literal sense, whereas people who were stuck in the old market thought they were doomed to fail, they would lose all their business. But that hasn’t been the case. In retrospect, it’s been amazing to see how much tourism has remained at Tsukiji, how many people still go there.”
The workers, of course, have disappeared. The locals, by and large, have found little reason to return.
AloJapan.com