The “Maguroeconomics” Of Tuna, The Grand Champion Of Fish Cuisineff

By Hiroshi Endo

Tuna, or maguro, remains steadfastly popular when eaten as sashimi, or as an ingredient for sushi. When fishermen decide to take a tuna fishing holiday, the shock reverberates throughout Japan, and when catches are bountiful, the national mood is merry. Is there any other fish that is so beloved by the Japanese?

To obtain a better understanding of the “maguroeconomics” of the tuna market, and to get a better read on the present and future of tuna, I turned to two tuna experts.

I should state from the outset that “macro” and “maguro” are similar sounding words with different meanings. “Macro” is defined in the dictionary as “very big” and “giant,” and unlike “maguro,” is not an item to be consumed. If judged from the size of the fish, and its presence in Japanese fish cuisine, however, “maguro” is certainly a “macro” fish.

The first person I turned to for an introduction to the ins and outs of “maguroeconomics” is Takeshi Ueda, 66, the proprietor of “Naito,” a middleman-wholesaler of high-quality maguro at the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo. Five years ago, he published “The Maguroeconomics of the Riverside Fish Market” and thus is now considered an expert on “maguroeconomics.” First-class restaurants and sushi shops throughout Japan defer to his judgment on tuna.

After the 9/11 terrorist attacks against the U.S., airliners were temporarily grounded, and air shipments of tuna to the Tsukiji market were delayed. One can “read trends in the world by taking a look at tuna,” he boasts without a hint of modesty.

When I visited his home, I first paid my respects to his choice of title for his book. He replies, perhaps embarrassed, and somewhat curtly, “Really? There was the word ‘macroeconomics’ in the newspaper, so I thought it might be amusing to combine it with ‘maguro.’ That’s all that was.”

Since he is an expert on all things tuna, once he gets started on the topic, he does not stop. “The tuna is a migratory fish and it has seasons. In the spring, the highest quality raw blue fin tuna is from Taiwan, Kyushu, and Shikoku. In the summer, it comes on the Pacific side from Shizuoka and Choshi (in Chiba Prefecture), and on the Japan Sea side from Sado Island (in Niigata Prefecture). This year the catch from the Japan Sea side is bountiful. In autumn, the tuna shifts to Sanriku, and in the winter, to Oma (in Aomori Prefecture), and Hokkaido,” says Ueda.

”Even with the same fish, the taste changes depending on whether the cut is from the back or belly, or (and moving from the head to tail) from the front, the middle, or end. Toro, or the fatty part of the tuna, is popular, but the deep red meat of the blue fin tuna from Oma is the best.”

Ueda predicts that the “tuna from Japan’s coastal waters will never disappear from Japanese dining tables. It’s hard to think that we will be able to completely eat up an entire population of a migratory fish,” and rejects the prediction that Japan will be short of tuna because the U.S. and China are buying it up and the resource will be exhausted. He is more concerned about the cheap frozen tuna that is being distributed in massive quantities.

”The trading companies buy up an entire boatload of tuna, and ship the tuna to supermarkets while bypassing the central fish market. When wholesalers and middlemen bring tuna to supermarkets, they do business only with the places offering the lowest prices. If the price-cutting competition continues because of this, no fishmongers will be left. And local shopping streets will lose their vitality,” says Ueda.

Since it seemed as if Ueda’s tuna talk had taken a macroeconomic turn, I decided to ask him about the state of the Japanese economy.

”In the past, I used to believe that if I worked in a food-related job, I would never miss a meal, but that’s no longer true. Fellow wholesalers and restaurants and drinking establishments are going bust one after another. Isn’t the Japanese economy in the worst shape? When I was a kid, Tsukiji was a jumble of people and goods, so you couldn’t even walk through the alleys. But today it has lost its vitality. Even if the market is moved to Toyosu (in Koto-ku, Tokyo), the outlook is grim,” says Ueda.

When I ask him what should be done, he ponders my question, and then replies, “Tuna don’t blink. They are constantly swimming. So those politicians should take a cue from the tuna by not napping in the Diet (laughter). If they do that, the economy will improve.”

Ueda insists that the tuna will not disappear, but his prediction applies only to tuna from coastal seas. Oceangoing tuna fishing boats decided to forgo fishing this summer due to the impact of soaring oil prices.

So what lies ahead for the tuna fishing industry? To get an answer to this question, I visited Kenji Saito, 61, who once spent six years on an oceangoing tuna boat, and now runs Kashikiya, a tuna cuisine restaurant in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture. His book on tuna fishing, “Maguro Tosabune,” won the Shogakukan Nonfiction Award.

I showed up at Saito’s restaurant after he had finished his prep work, and he had a stern look on his face. “Soaring oil prices are the biggest problem for oceangoing tuna fishermen, coming just at the time that things were looking up as they were aiming to restore the resource with catch limits and reductions in the fleet. At this rate, they will be forced to abandon the industry,” warns Saito. Even if oil prices head downward, he predicts that conditions will continue to be bleak.

When Saito fished for tuna nearly 30 years ago, oceangoing tuna boats were thriving. They were hauling in so much tuna -- from off the coast of Cape Town, South Africa, from everywhere -- that it was a lark. Boat owners and fishermen were all smiles. But then foreign boats joined the fishing, and as they continued to fish, the resource began to decline before their eyes. And parallel to these developments, the trading companies began to buy up tuna by the boatload, driving down prices.

”In those days, you had to catch one million yen a day (of tuna) to break even. But today the price of tuna has fallen by half. Boat owners have tried to cut costs by hiring foreign crews, and have been able to reduce their break-even point to 600,000 yen per day. But soaring oil prices have added another 300,000 yen to their daily costs,” he says.

”In the past, tuna were fat, and their stomachs were filled with small fish and squid. Today, they are skinny and their stomachs are empty, probably because foreign purse-seine fishing boats have exhausted the supplies of the fish that they feed on. If we fail to place restrictions on both Japan’s long-line boats and the purse-seine fleets, the oceans will be depleted.”

Saito believes that “now is the time for both the upstream (the fishing industry) and the downstream (consumers) to come together. Japanese boats believe that they have the world’s best technology that enables them to catch tuna without harming the fish. But if the entire burden is placed on the fishing industry, the lights on Japan’s oceangoing tuna fishing boats will go out some day. The only solution is for consumers to accept a certain level of price increases, and for the government to provide generous compensation to the fishing industry.”

Saito is a true believer in offering his customers natural tuna caught on long lines. “The toro boom notwithstanding, I don’t use farm-raised tuna whose fat content has been enhanced,” he says. But Saito has heard that local fish markets will run out of stocks of frozen natural tuna by the end of the year.

”What I can do is convey the toils of the fishermen and the tastiness of the red meat of the natural tuna (to my customers). There are various ways of preparing tuna. It is good for you, and nothing has to be thrown away. There is no fish more wonderful than the tuna,” says Saito.

As the sun went down, I found myself sitting across the counter from Saito. As I bit into each dish -- sashimi, spareribs made from jaw meat, skin steeped in ponzu sauce –Saito’s words came to take on a deep meaning. “For Japanese, tuna is the grand champion of fish cuisine. We must leave some for the next generation without eating all of it,” he says.


A tuna fish is being processed at the Tokyo Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo