Grilled eel, a popular summer delicacy in Japan, is behind a department store food poisoning incident that has left more than 140 people sick and one dead, the store's president said.
Shinji Kaneko of Keikyu Department Store in Yokohama apologized after the customers, who had bought lunch boxes containing eel last week, suffered vomiting and diarrhea.
One of the customers — reportedly a woman in her 90s — died, Kaneko told reporters on Monday, bowing deeply and offering "our most sincere condolences."
The products included eel cooked in the traditional kabayaki style: skewered, grilled and basted in a sweet, sticky mixture of soy sauce and mirin rice wine.
A probe by health officials detected a type of bacteria called Staphylococcus aureus in the products, Keikyu Department Store said.
"We take what happened very seriously and feel deeply sorry about it. We will fully cooperate with investigations by public health authorities," Kaneko said.
Tokyo-based restaurant Isesada, which operates a stand inside the Keikyu department store, was responsible for cooking and directly selling the eel products.
Consumed worldwide, eel is particularly popular in Asia, and remains found in Japanese tombs show it has been eaten on the archipelago for thousands of years.