Located only blocks from Tokyo's glittering Ginza, Tsukiji-the world's largest marketplace for seafood-is a prominent landmark, well known but little understood by most Tokyoites: a supplier for countless fishmongers and sushi chefs, and a popular and fascinating destination for foreign tourists. Early every morning, the worlds of hi-tech and pre-tech trade noisily converge as tens of thousands of tons of seafood from every ocean of the world quickly change hands in Tsukiji's auctions and in the marketplace's hundreds of tiny stalls. In this absorbing firsthand study, 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 and illuminates trends of Japan's economic growth, changes in distribution and consumption, and the increasing globalization of the seafood trade. As he brings to life the sights and sounds of the marketplace, he reveals Tsukiji's rich internal culture, its place in Japanese cuisine, and the mercantile traditions that have shaped the marketplace since the early seventeenth century.
"The reader will see Tokyo's colossal fish emporium through Bestor's eyes, far better than we could ever see it with our own."
-Sidney Mi n t z , author of Sweetness and Power
"Bestor's vivid and meticulous study of Tokyo's seafood market is at once perhaps the best description we have of a modern, large-scale commodity bazaar, an important contribution to comparative economics, and a powerful analysis of the everyday workings
of Japanese culture." -Clifford Geertz, author of The Interpretation of Cultures
"This is, quite simply, a masterpiece of ethnography and a jewel of a book. It will prove immediately popular and influential." -William W. Kelly, Professor of Anthropology, Yale University
"This study is a fine example of how key local institutions both drive and reflect larger national and global processes.This is a rare book, full of treats for both the specialist and the general reader." -Arjun Appadurai, author of Modernity at Large
"The reader will see Tokyo's colossal fish emporium through Bestor's eyes, far better than we could ever see it with our own."
-Sidney Mi n t z , author of Sweetness and Power
"Bestor's vivid and meticulous study of Tokyo's seafood market is at once perhaps the best description we have of a modern, large-scale commodity bazaar, an important contribution to comparative economics, and a powerful analysis of the everyday workings
of Japanese culture." -Clifford Geertz, author of The Interpretation of Cultures
"This is, quite simply, a masterpiece of ethnography and a jewel of a book. It will prove immediately popular and influential." -William W. Kelly, Professor of Anthropology, Yale University
"This study is a fine example of how key local institutions both drive and reflect larger national and global processes.This is a rare book, full of treats for both the specialist and the general reader." -Arjun Appadurai, author of Modernity at Large