Regarding the Feb. 7 article "Tsukiji looks to curb pesky glut of tourists": While having some sympathy for the fishmongers of Tsukiji market, the article presents the inescapable and, unfortunately, all-too-common whiff of xenophobia in Japanese institutions (however insignificant).
One can presumably read "tourist" to mean "foreigner," even though the vast majority of tourists in Japan are Japanese. Comments such as "Fish merchants have complained that tourists occasionally try to touch the fish . . . raising sanitation concerns," while probably true, are based, I fear, on the tendency of many Japanese to see the world reductively and in binary terms, e.g. Japanese = Clean / Foreign = Dirty. Rather than focus on any particular group of people, might I suggest that market organizers simply restrict the numbers in attendance at any one time?
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