February 26, 2019 — If you are a sushi lover, most likely you have eaten fish from the Tsukiji Market in Tokyo. It would not be an overstatement that Tsukiji served as the foundation of the current global popularity of sushi.
The 23-hectare Tsukiji opened in 1935, and became the space for over a thousand vendors dealing with the freshest seafood from all over the world. In 2015, the market traded around 1,700 tons of seafood, and the sales amounted to $14 million a day, although the figures are declining lately due to competition with other routes of seafood distribution.
Because Tukiji was built to accommodate the railroad-based transportation system, the facilities became outdated for the modern truck-based system. As a result, relocation of the market became an agenda in 1960s. After multiple discussions and postponements over the past years, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government (TMG) finally declared the move to the new location in Toyosu, which is less than two miles away from Tsukiji, in 2001.