Reflections | What an ancient Chinese hero’s fatal love of raw fish warns us about uncooked food

The recent sale of the most expensive tuna in Tokyo reflects sushi’s popularity, but an episode in Chinese history shows raw food’s dangers

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A Kiyomura staff member holds meat from the 243kg bluefin tuna the company recently bought at a Tokyo fish auction for a record US$3.2 million. Photo: Reuters

Published: 8:15am, 17 Jan 2026

Tokyo’s famed New Year fish auction has smashed its own headline record, with a giant bluefin tuna fetching an eye-watering price. At the Toyosu fish market’s first auction of 2026, a 243kg (535lb) bluefin tuna was snapped up for 510 million yen (US$3.2 million), making it the most expensive tuna ever sold at this annual ritual.

The winning bid came from Kiyomura, the company behind the popular Sushi Zanmai chain. The purchase eclipsed the company’s own record-setting bid from 2019.

The fish itself was caught off Oma in northern Japan, a region famed for producing premium sushi-grade tuna that reliably sends bidders into a frenzy. As always, the pre-dawn spectacle drew crowds and cameras.

Beyond bragging rights for Kiyomura, this year’s splurge reflects a cautiously optimistic trend: bluefin stocks are slowly recovering, thanks to conservation measures after years of overfishing. That has made these record-breaking sales feel a little less controversial than they once did.

Kiyoshi Kimura, president of Kiyomura, stands behind the massive bluefin tuna his company bought for a record 510 million yen in Tokyo, Japan, on January 5, 2026. Photo: EPA

Raw seafood is – or used to be – one of my favourite foods. I have long fancied myself something of a connoisseur of Japanese sashimi and sushi, preferring the lighter, subtler flavours of lean tuna, sea bream and squid to the bolder, oilier notes of mackerel and salmon, the latter being my least favourite fish when eaten raw.

I get triggered when I see diners drowning slices of sashimi in soy sauce, or worse, stirring wasabi-in-a-tube – usually horseradish with food colouring and assorted additives – into the soy sauce to produce a disgusting green sludge that bears an unfortunate resemblance to the pea soup chucked up by the demon-possessed girl in The Exorcist.

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The recent sale of the most expensive tuna in Tokyo reflects sushi’s popularity, but an episode in Chinese history shows raw food’s dangers

The recent sale of the most expensive tuna in Tokyo reflects sushi’s popularity, but an episode in Chinese history shows raw food’s dangers