Tsukiji: The Fish Market at the Center of the World

「築地：世界を動かす日本の魚市場」

by Theodore C. Bestor

July 2004

University of California Press

California Studies in Food and Culture 11

ISBN 0-520-22024-2 (paper) $24.95

ISBN 0-520-22023-4 (cloth) $60.00

Japanese abstract -- 「築地：世界を動かす日本の魚市場」

Reviews of Tsukiji

Located only blocks from Tokyo’s glittering Ginza, Tsukiji--the world's largest marketplace for seafood--is a well-known but little understood landmark of the city, lively before dawn as it supplies countless fishmongers and sushi chefs and draws fascinated foreign tourists. Each day, tens of thousands of tons of seafood from around the globe quickly change hands in Tsukiji's auctions and pass through the marketplace’s hundreds of tiny specialized stalls. In this absorbing ethnography, Theodore C. Bestor--who has spent a dozen years doing fieldwork at fish markets and fishing ports in Japan, North America, Korea, and Europe--explains the complex social institutions that organize Tsukiji's auctions and the supply lines leading to and from them. The daily bustle of the sushi trade plays out against the backdrop of Japanese economic trends, changes in distribution and consumption, and the accelerating globalization of the seafood trade. As Bestor brings to life the sights, sounds, rhythms, and spaces of Tsukiji, he reveals its rich internal culture, its place in Japanese cuisine, and the mercantile traditions that have shaped the marketplace since the early seventeenth century.

This book, the first ethnography of Tsukiji in any language and the first study of Japanese food culture on this scale, argues that markets, commodities, and distribution systems are as much cultural and social phenomena as they are economic ones, and that anthropological analyses of complex societies must examine markets and market cultures to understand both globalization and its local contexts. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, maps, and historical prints, the book juxtaposes vivid vignettes of Tsukiji’s traders in action with clear analyses of market process, and brings Tsukiji into focus for readers interested in anthropology, cuisine, Japanese history, institutional economics, urban studies, and the seafood trade, as well as visitors to Tokyo and globalization-watchers in general.

Theodore C. Bestor is Professor of Anthropology and Japanese Studies, and Chair of Social Anthropology at Harvard University, and is past president of the Society for Urban Anthropology and the Society for East Asian Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association. His publications include Neighborhood Tokyo (1989) and Doing Fieldwork in Japan (co-editor, 2003).

Table of contents of “Tsukiji” on the UC Press website

Order “Tsukiji” from UC Press

Order “Tsukiji” from Amazon.com

Order “Tsukiji” from Amazon.co.jp

Tsukiji Research homepage

Return to Bestor’s home page