17th century
A01=Theodore C. Bestor
asian culture
asian history
Author_Theodore C. Bestor
case study
Category=JH
Category=JHMC
Category=NHTB
Category=WB
east asia
economics
economy
eq_bestseller
eq_food-drink
eq_history
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
ethnography
fieldwork
fishmonger
foodways
globalization
international
japan
japanese culture
japanese food
marketplace
public health
seafood
seafood trade
sushi
sushi chef
technology
tokyo
tourism
tourist
tourist trap
tsukiji
Product details
- ISBN 9780520220249
- Weight: 680g
- Dimensions: 152 x 229mm
- Publication Date: 13 Jul 2004
- Publisher: University of California Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Paperback
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Located only blocks from Tokyo's glittering Ginza, Tsukiji--the world's largest marketplace for seafood--is a prominent landmark, well known but little understood by most Tokyoites: a supplier for countless fishmongers and sushi chefs, and a popular and fascinating destination for foreign tourists. Early every morning, the worlds of hi-tech and pre-tech trade noisily converge as tens of thousands of tons of seafood from every ocean of the world quickly change hands in Tsukiji's auctions and in the marketplace's hundreds of tiny stalls. In this absorbing firsthand study, Theodore C. Bestor--who has spent a dozen years doing fieldwork at fish markets and fishing ports in Japan, North America, Korea, and Europe--explains the complex social institutions that organize Tsukiji's auctions and the supply lines leading to and from them and illuminates trends of Japan's economic growth, changes in distribution and consumption, and the increasing globalization of the seafood trade.
As he brings to life the sights and sounds of the marketplace, he reveals Tsukiji's rich internal culture, its place in Japanese cuisine, and the mercantile traditions that have shaped the marketplace since the early seventeenth century.
Theodore C. Bestor is Professor of Anthropology and Japanese Studies at Harvard University and past President of the American Anthropological Association's East Asian Studies Section and the Society for Urban Anthropology. His publications include Neighborhood Tokyo (1989), Doing Fieldwork in Japan (coeditor, 2003), and "How Sushi Went Global" in Foreign Policy (2000).
