Record 510 Million Yen for Bluefin Tuna at Tokyo Auction

A 243-kilogram bluefin tuna fetched a record 510 million yen, equivalent to about 3.2 million dollars, at the annual New Year auction held in the predawn hours on Monday at Tokyo's Toyosu fish market. The winning bid came from Kiyomura Corporation, the operator of the popular Sushizanmai sushi chain, marking the highest price ever paid for a single tuna at the event.

Kiyoshi Kimura, the company's owner and a frequent top bidder known as the Tuna King, surpassed his own previous record of 333.6 million yen set in 2019. The tuna, caught off the coast of Oma in northern Japan, a region renowned for producing some of the country's finest specimens, sold for 2.1 million yen per kilogram. Kimura expressed surprise at the rapid escalation in bidding. "I thought we would be able to buy a little cheaper, but the price soared before you knew it," he told reporters after the sale.

The auction began with the ringing of a bell, filling the market floor with rows of torpedo-shaped fish, their tails removed to allow buyers to inspect the meat's color, texture and fattiness as they walked among the lots. While hundreds of tuna are sold daily at the early morning market, prices climb...