For the New Year’s auction, an institution in Tokyo, Japan, a bluefin tuna weighing more than 200 kilos was sold for 257,000 euros.
A 212-kilo bluefin tuna found a buyer for 36 million yen (257,000 euros) at a traditional New Year’s auction on Thursday in Tokyo, a price almost twice as high as in 2022. The prestigious restaurateur of sushi Onodera Group and the Japanese wholesaler Yamayuki won the day, as in last year’s edition.
The sharp increase over one year reflects an improvement in the market trend, after three years of falling prices due to the pandemic, which particularly weighed on the Japanese restaurant sector.
Record in 2019
But the absolute record for this tuna auction, reached in 2019 before the pandemic (333 million yen, or 2.7 million euros at the time), is still very far.
The self-proclaimed “king of tuna” Kiyoshi Kimura has long reigned over this symbolic event and offering the winner strong publicity, and it was this restaurateur who paid the record price in 2019.
But in recent years, Kiyoshi Kimura has been less of a spendthrift, citing the pandemic.
