Matsumora points at each of the two bidders, and as he marches on, they resolve the tie with a conclusive round of the children’s game of rock-scissors-paper. Occasionally this covert system produces a tie. It begins as auctioneer Hisashi Matsumora slips a black fabric sheath over his right forearm and hand as he marches down the rows of blue cases, buyers from distributors and restaurants slip their hands inside the sheath, communicating in intricate handshakes their bids for each lot. Like almost every other feature of the fugu trade, the auction process is unique. “ Fugu is the king of the fish,” proclaimed Ono, of the fishermen’s cooperative, as scores of workers manhandle the unlikely monarch into cases before the auction, sorting by size and species. To illustrate the exceptional value of fugu, consider that the fish accounted for 52% of the seaport’s total fish landings but 80% of the catch’s total market value. In living form, the fugu gives little hint of the glories of its cuisine, although in Shimonoseki, where about 90% of Japan’s fugu is landed and sold, there is no debating its attributes.Ī fleet of 200 trawlers returning from two- to three-week voyages delivers its catch here last year’s landings at Haedomari market totaled 3,126 tons worth $90 million. Today, fugu meals prepared at any of Japan’s hundreds of specialized restaurants are among the most expensive in the country.Ī full dinner of several courses, including sashimi- slices of raw fish, to be eaten with a soy sauce and green radish dip- fugu stew, miso soup with fugu chunks and a ceramic tumbler of heated sake with two grilled fugu fins floating within, will run up to $400 a person.Īppropriately, some of these restaurants reflect the highest attainments of the Japanese nouvelle cuisine style of presentation, as fugu sashimi is laid before the diner in intricate patterns amid carefully arranged appetizers and courses. In the past, before the government imposed rigorous training and licensing standards on fugu chefs, hundreds of diners died each year from even the merest taste of fugu liver, ovaries, or skin. And every diner has heard how fugu poisoning characteristically begins with numbness in the extremities and progresses to a generalized nervous paralysis even as the victim’s mind continues functioning to take in the seriousness of his or her condition. The 17th-Century poet Basho sang of its flavor and danger. Reputedly, the emperor is forbidden to eat fugu. This contributes strongly to the captivation of the public. A diner places his or her life in the hands of chefs licensed to prepare only the nonpoisonous white fillet meat. But even many Japanese acknowledge that there is one peculiar aspect of fugu that helps place it at the pinnacle of this country’s cuisine: The fish is lethally poisonous, concentrating a deadly tetrodotoxin poison-as much as 25 times more lethal than curare-in the tissues of some of its internal organs and portions of its skin.
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