Ambiguous Plan for Fish Market

Governor of Tokyo, Yuriko Koike, officially announced on Tuesday that she decided to move Tsukiji Fish Market to new market built in Toyosu. While new market will be a comprehensive distribution base, Tsukiji is going to be a theme park for foods. Koike concluded the dispute over unclear process of choosing Toyosu, where chemical contamination was found in the soil, to be promoting original plan. However, actual plan for both markets is still not clear enough.

In the press conference on Tuesday, Koike stressed that she would protect Tsukiji and make use of Toyosu. Toyosu has accepted negative image of contamination as unfit for a market deal with fresh sea products. Koike explained that Tokyo Metropolitan Government would remove harmful rumor on Tsukiji with maintenance of safety in the soil. With enhancement of function for cooling or freezing foods, Toyosu is going to be a major center of food distribution.

A big problem is how Tsukiji is going to be after leaving the market. Wholesale shops have been reluctant to move to Toyosu, not only because the place was polluted, but the brand of Tsukiji was too prevalent to build a new brand soon. Koike decided to redevelop Tsukiji to be a park for exhibiting food culture within five years. A part of the land for Tsukiji Market will be used for a transportation basis in the time of Tokyo Olympic 2020.

In a calculation by Market Issue Project Team of Tokyo government, redevelopment of Tsukiji would spend three to seven years and ¥77.8 to ¥99.1 billion. Koike’s idea of food theme park did not have concrete plan for the cost, lacking actual concept whether the park would be profitable or not. It is still unclear how “Tsukiji Brand” can be maintained with her new plan.

It is estimated that Toyosu new market will produce ¥9.2 billion of annual deficit. There is no plan for repaying ¥600 billion of debt made for building Toyosu. Tokyo government has paid ¥5 billion of compensation for the fish shops with the delay of moving from Tsukiji to Toyosu. The schedule can further be delayed for environmental assessment in Toyosu, which requires about eight months.

The decision was affected by political consideration over coming election of Tokyo Metropolitan Congress. To achieve support from Komeito and Japan Communist Party to her new party called Tokyo Residence First, Koike maintained original plan of moving to Toyosu for Komeito and introduced redevelopment of Tsukiji for JCP. But, it is still unclear whether the decision will construct a framework for containing Liberal Democratic Party in Tokyo.