June 2006—"the great gut of the city"

text & photos by Austin Pick

"Tokyo is the most epic and confounding expression of chaos by a national soul otherwise famous for its love of order." —Steve Erickson

Early summer in Shinjuku, Tokyo's racing brain from stem to cerebrum, the nervous cluster of Kabuki-cho's red-lit, sexy sleeplessness shadowed by monoliths of political and public administration, structures arcing in edifice above dense synaptic convolutions of stores and signs bursting in a communication of primary colors, sending minds aspin in the folding grey streets and in the tunneling passways of Shinjuku Station, the world's busiest nucleus of humans moving in a fluxing confusion along arteries of technological transit, ever cellular... An average of 3.29 million people pass thru Shinjuku Station daily, and we swam thru too, sometimes separated, among the foam of floating faces, single digits in the frictional warmth of our species seen as gene swarm...

Returning to the station at dawn and finding it almost empty only heightened our sense of the bizarre buzz of transience reverberating there, like caffeine encoded in concrete. We waited, slowly waking, and a wrong train later found ourselves sliding with the early morning sun into Tokyo's very stomach, already gurgling...

Tsukiji Fish Market is the largest wholesale seafood market in the world, fluorescent open-air gills wet with blood, seawater and slime, coughing with the congestion of commerce and truck-rumble, breath like a shipwreck. They say Tsukiji handles more than 450 varieties of sea creature, allegedly edible, and even a brief exploration of the market is enough to establish then that the Japanese will eat anything, everywhere monsters still acrawl in their shells; urchins sulking spinelessly in brine; indistinct goopy blobs of protean flesh by the tub-full; piles of tiny boney and bug-eyed dried fishies; snakish coils writhing in their own blood; frozen hulks of gunmetal-grey meat being drawn thru bandsaws; disembodied tentacles stacked in styrofoam. Tsukiji is a panoply of grotesque and beautiful organisms, miracles of the oceans all washed up on Tokyo's crowded dinner table. And most of it, despite appearances, is admittedly delicious. Tsukiji is the great gut of the city, churning the catch into something consumable—the chewing that occurs later, in restaurants and homes, only a formality, almost...

Tuna, prized in Japan, is the centerpiece of the Market, which begins formally every morning with a massive auction of the fresh and frozen fish. It is estimated that Japan is responsible for fully one third of the world's total tuna consumption, much of the best selection probably passing thru Tsukiji, where wholesalers saw, slice and shave the great torpedoed bodies down into steaks, flakes, sushi, sashimi and other favored forms, the choicest meats reserved to be eaten raw, red and delicate. But Tsukiji's auctions are an increasingly old-fashioned organ of Japanese business, where quality is critical and tuna are considered as one would evaluate a sumo wrestler, individually examined for muscle bulk and the smooth, delectable fat of an open-ocean animal. Even the enormous quantity of fish moving daily thru Tsukiji Market accounts for only 11 percent of Japan's tuna. We eat the seas.

The rowdy and industrious atmosphere of the Market is part of it's charm, it's bewildering morning magic. We come as tourists, of course, as do others, but the Market is not a tourist "attraction." There are no buses or guides, no cordoned walking paths or brochures. Tsukiji rushes forward, fish flying, and we are permitted to look around so long as we don't get in the way. This is unusual in Japan, in a culture where things tend to be structured, where behavior and even emotional response are often carefully encoded into patterns of social expectation and obligation. Take a picture here. Drink tea over there. Cry at this event. Travel in numbers. It is said that the Japanese are tourists in their own country, and this begins to clarify why many attractions in Japan feel like experience factories, spectacles standardized for the efficient processing of persons. Forest paths have been paved, temples turned into high-traffic museums, and artifice erected wherever necessary.

At Tsukiji, however, the market's momentum plunges us into the visceral immediacy of an intestinal maze, into the sharp-focus of bright bare bulbs, styrofoam and sea-slime, knives and numbers. We flop gasping in this sudden onrush, trying to avoid being run over by market carts carrying 800-pound fish and not stopping. Tsukiji Market is real, exasperating and fecund, disgusting and lovely, and it returns us, reeling, to our senses.

Later though, feeling entirely shot thru and sticky with fishiness, we passed on a breakfast of the world's freshest sushi, and left the fish there in Tokyo's stomach, uneaten and already settled...

Yours with Love. Stay Wide >> A  

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