A Japanese sushi chain will take a more than $600,000 loss on the most expensive fish ever sold at Tokyo’s Tsukiji market as it sells $74 pieces of tuna for $5 apiece.
Kiyomura K.K. paid a record 56 million yen ($730,000) for the fish at the market’s first auction in 2012. Chefs carved it into about 10,000 pieces of sushi that were sold at the restaurants’ normal prices of between 134 yen and 418 yen instead of the 5,649 yen needed for the chain to break even.
“It is not just about the money, as there will be positive ripple effects from buying the fish,” said Hiroshi Umehara a spokesman for the chain. “It is also about the Japanese spirit.”
Foreign companies have outbid Kiyomura at the auction in the past three years, according to Umehara. Japanese eat more fish per capita than any other developed country, consuming 56.7 kilograms (128 pounds) annually, compared with a global average of 17.1 kilograms, according to the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization. Fish accounts for 23 percent of protein in the daily Japanese diet, compared with four percent in the U.S.
