![\"Kiyoshi](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JV9GPH_AFP_JapanFishingTuna_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nKiyoshi Kimura displays a 243kg bluefin tuna at his main sushi restaurant in Tokyo, after he paid a record $5.6 million for the fish.
\nPhoto: Yuichi Yamazaki\n<\/p>\n
A Japanese sushi entrepreneur paid a record 510 million yen (NZ$5.6 million) for a giant bluefin tuna on Monday at an annual prestigious New Year auction in Tokyo’s main fish market, smashing the previous all-time high.<\/p>\n
Dave Gershman at the Pew Charitable Trusts’ international fisheries team used news of the auction to highlight that stocks of Pacific bluefin tuna were improving after being “near collapse”.<\/p>\n
Self-styled “Tuna King” Kiyoshi Kimura’s sushi restaurant chain paid the top price for the 243kg fish that was caught off Japan’s northern coast.<\/p>\n
“I’d thought we would be able to buy a little cheaper, but the price soared before you knew it,” Kimura said after the pre-dawn auction at Tokyo’s main fish market.<\/p>\n
“I was surprised at the price…I hope that by eating auspicious tuna, as many people as possible will feel energised,” he told reporters.<\/p>\n
![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/4JV9GPH_AFP_JapanFishingTuna_01_jpg.jpeg\")
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\nA member of staff holds up a head of a 243kg bluefin tuna at the sushi restaurant ‘Sushizanmai’ in Tokyo.
\nPhoto: Yuichi Yamazaki\n<\/p>\n
The 510.3 million yen price was the highest since comparable data started being collected in 1999.<\/p>\n
The previous high was 333.6 million yen for a 278kg bluefin in 2019, after the fish market moved from its traditional Tsukiji area in central Tokyo to a more modern facility.<\/p>\n
The top bidder last year paid 207 million yen for a 276kg bluefin.<\/p>\n
Shortly after this year’s auction, the tuna was butchered and turned into sushi, selling for around 500 yen (NZ$5.50) per roll.<\/p>\n
“I feel like I’ve begun the year in a good way after eating something so auspicious as the year starts,” 19-year-old Minami Sugiyama told AFP from a table in one of Kimura’s restaurants in Tsukiji.<\/p>\n
Fellow customer Kiyoshi Nishimura agreed.<\/p>\n
“Even without dipping it in soy sauce, there’s sweetness. And the richness, the texture… it just makes you feel happy,” the 40-year-old Shinto priest said.<\/p>\n
During the Covid-19 pandemic the New Year tunas commanded only a fraction of their usual top prices as restaurants scaled back operations.<\/p>\n
Gershman said in an emailed statement that a 2017 recovery plan “is working, and if decision makers take further action in 2026, the future for Pacific bluefin will be bright”.<\/p>\n
“This year, fisheries managers from Japan, the United States, Korea, and other countries from across the Pacific who target bluefin should agree on a long-term, sustainable management plan that would lock in a healthy population and ensure that the species never again faces the overfishing of the past,” he added.<\/p>\n
– AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kiyoshi Kimura displays a 243kg bluefin tuna at his main sushi restaurant in Tokyo, after he paid a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":217807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[48,138,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45],"class_list":{"0":"post-217806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-audio","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-current-affairs","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-news","13":"tag-newzealand","14":"tag-nz","15":"tag-podcasts","16":"tag-public-radio","17":"tag-radio-new-zealand","18":"tag-rnz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=217806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/217806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/217807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=217806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=217806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=217806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}