Tokyo's Tsukiji, dubbed "the fish market at the center of the world" for its influence on the global seafood trade, is being forced to move to a site laced with benzene and cancer-causing chemicals.
The Tokyo Metropolitan Government is pushing ahead with plans to relocate the world's largest fish market to an artificial island in Tokyo Bay in 2014. The move, a pet project of Gov. Shintaro Ishihara, will be financed by selling the existing site, two blocks from Japan's most expensive land in the Ginza shopping district and worth at least ¥188 billion.
Tenants of the market, including Haruo Yamazaki, formed a group to oppose the move, saying food won't be safe at the new site, once occupied by Tokyo Gas Co., after arsenic, benzene and petrochemicals were found in the soil. The government promised to spend ¥58.6 billion to clean up the waste.
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