Tsukiji: Market and Spatial "Self"-Organization

The rise in popularity of edible raw fish was driven by pure necessity to preserve it for future consumption.  During the early 1800’s before sushi was part of Japanese diet, raw fish was packed in fermented rice and between layers of salt in order to preserve it for future use.  From the need to store nutrients for future use stemmed out a new style of food that had captured the taste buds of not only the Japanese but also those who seek the exotic across the world. 

Although sushi’s popularity can be traced back to the somewhat recent Meiji Period, the fact is that the formation of a fish wholesale market was fundamentally shaped by the demand of Japanese culinary culture.  The reality is that Japan as an island, and hence a maritime culture, has depended on maritime life for centuries.  Some archeological excavations have suggested that during the Jomon period (roughly 10,000-300 BCE) fresh and saltwater fish and shellfish were part of the diet of the earliest inhabitants of the Japanese islands. The need to consolidate the suppliers and buyers within one market which ensured fair and open pricing avoiding monopolistic practices inevitably resulted in the formation of a fish market which evolved to what is known today as Tsukiji Wholesale Market.  Theodore C. Bestor in his book, TSUKIJI: The Fish Market at the Center of the World, simply points out how Tsukiji just happened to stand between the sea and society, it was just a matter of time before it was created.

Today, “the Japanese fishing industry is among the largest in the world employing hundreds of thousands of people.  Tsukiji handles about 1/6 of the seafood that passes through Japanese wholesale markets and is the largest single market place for fish not only in Japan but in the world.”[1]   Prices determined at Tsukiji trickle down to the remaining 800 other fish wholesale markets in Japan and significantly affect supply and demand of fish worldwide.  Bestor describes how prices set at Tsukiji are faxed across continents and how tons of fresh fish, in some cases even live-fish, from around the world land at Narita International Airport.”  Tsukiji also referred by the locals as “Tokyo no daidokoro” meaning Tokyo’s kitchen or pantry, is more than just a market, as you begin to understand Tsukiji more in-depth it becomes clear how it can serve as a clear example of the economic forces and social cultural structures that underlie deep in Japanese culture.

Although this paper intends to understand some of the anthropological networks that shape Tsukiji, which Theodore C. Bestor does a remarkable job in delineating, it will briefly touch the surface and will further explore it in a somewhat scientific manner through hypothetical frameworks to discover the emergence of self-organizational patterns. More explicitly it will investigate how Tsukiji as an entity offers an important vantage point from which to examine how systems of organization with simple rules of behavior will tend to self-organize and the transition from low-level rules (later discussed) to develop higher-level sophistication of interactivity between local agents.   Although this is not only a phenomenon that occurs at this particular market exclusively, I intend to briefly determine Tsukiji’s role as a benchmark for the understanding of the non-evident emergent systems that may shape other parts of contemporary Japanese society. 

A Brief Note on Emergence

The rise in popularity in the study of ‘emergence’ was one of the outcomes from the developments of complexity theory more than eighty years ago.  In architecture it has started to acquire more and more appeal as research has provided interesting discoveries for a varied array of applications ranging from mathematical formulation that consequently can be used to generate design, to the better understanding of complex systems of the natural world.[2] Steven Johnson, in his book Emergence; the Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software, defines emergence as ‘The movement from low-level rules to higher-level sophistication […]’, and ‘…a higher-level pattern arising out of parallel complex interactions between local agents.’ The spontaneous creation of an “organized whole” out of a ‘disordered; collection of interacting parts, as witness in self-organizing systems in physics, chemistry, biology, sociology…is a basic part of dynamical emergence.“[3]

A clear understanding of the market and its participants is essential to determine how low-level rules that govern over Tsukiji’s day-to-day functioning, result in higher-level patterns arising out of the complex interactions between the markets participants.

Tsukiji Market and its Constituents

Fish consumption and preparation is for certain an important component of Japan’s historical heritage, and is still regarded as an important component of Japanese daily life.   As an outsider fish preparation and consumption might seem a simple process involving fishing, cutting, and serving.  For those who have had the opportunity to visit Japan and/or have an affinity to sushi or raw fish, certainly recognize that the process of fish selection and preparation is quite complex and to many, it is considered an art in itself.

From an extremely controlled market, driven by monopolies during much of the Meiji and Edo period, Tsukiji has been transformed into one of the most efficient Auction houses where the market ‘freely’ (with a few exceptions) determines the price of the product being auctioned.

There are basically three levels of exchange that occur at the fish market.  The first one occurs between the seven registered auction houses and their suppliers. The suppliers range from trading companies to international producers from across the world.  The second, results from the auctioning process, involves the auction houses and the intermediary wholesalers, which in turn sell their products to retailers and restaurant owners (Refer to Exhibit #1,2,3.)  Behind the curtains, lies an intricate system that governs over the legal practices of exchange involving licenses for all parties involved, international trade agreements, and tariffs, just to mention some.  To avoid unfair transactions which often swarm wholesale auction markets, the Central Wholesale Market Law (1923, later revised in 1971) was established to ensure fair prices and transactions.  Before this law was established most prices were negotiated behind closed doors between sellers and buyers.[4]  There are three guiding principles by which the market has been governed since the 1923’s Market Law that have prevented the formation of oligopolies through the sustainment of; vertical division (acting against most forms of vertical integration or keiretsu; financial and/or personnel affiliations across groups of companies), horizontal fragmentation, and the auction mechanism.

“The present system of wholesale market in Japan has two features: (1) Local governments found and manage their central wholesale markets. (2) Prices are fixed on the basis of auction regardless of volume of transaction. This is a unique system; the law restricts transactions in the markets to maintain impartiality.”[5]

Bestor points out how food culture is shaped by the social institutions and values of capitalism, traditional mercantile life, the fishing industry, world fluctuations of demand and supply, new technologies, and trends of change in Japanese domestic living.  A different approach could be proposed by understanding the market entirely as product of a complicated socio-economic and cultural formula, but rather as another important variable in the formula in Japanese life in which other micro economies and social institutions model themselves to the market and solely respond to changes in the market’s conditions. 

Emergence of high-level Patterns of Organization

One of the most remarkable aspects of the auction process at Tsukiji is the speed by which transactions are made, and the use of what Bestor refers to “cryptic exchanges between the auctioneers’ throaty growls and the silent hand gestures of impassive buyers.”  This level of sophistication involving the development of a ‘biding-buying language’ emerged from the need to conceal their interest in specific batches of fish and avoid price wars with competing bidders.  Is worth mentioning is that although horizontal and vertical affiliations are not permitted, networks of relationships unfold in an extremely complex manner.  For instance, a particular supplier might from time to time disfavor one particular auction house, but rather than break the ties completely, it will still conduct business with it, but will slowly transfer a larger sum of its business to the other auction houses it supplies.  Ties are rarely broken, since both participating ends recognize the market volatility by which might force them to conduct business again in the future.

What is not that apparent behind the auction process is how the market does not operate as a spot market in which there is no need for keeping trading relations.  As Bestor points out “Tsukiji’s auctions, as social institutions, enhance rather than erode stable long-term trading relationships, enabling trading alliances to readily emerge and survive in the midst of a competitive market.”[6]  This phenomenon of cooperation within a competitive environment has been understood by economist first coined by Charles F. Sabel in 1982, as “coopetition.”  More explicitly, it describes the integral relationships between cooperation and competition in dynamic economic systems.[7]  For example, Tsukiji’s small-scale wholesalers often find themselves in difficult positions in which they must cooperate with one another to defend their market niches against larger vertically integrated corporations, which might significantly affect their share of the market’s profits.

The best example of how high-order self-organizing principles have emerged within the market is the process by which stalls are assigned to the intermediate wholesalers.  Every four to five years, the 1,677 stalls are stripped down, and through an extremely complex method of lotteries they are reassigned.  What is fascinating is how this system was instituted by the federation of intermediate wholesalers themselves (known as the To-Oroshi).   The lottery was a system instituted by the wholesalers so that “no one gets to monopolize the best locations, and no one gets saddled permanently with the disadvantages of bad locations, either”[8] (Refer to Exhibit # 4)  It is not the purpose of this paper to go into the intricacies of such lottery, but what is important is how the mechanism emerged on its own and became a self-regulated market.  This high-level system of organization stemmed out of what would seem as a disorganized system of parts/stalls.  The willingness to share the risks involved in inhabiting parts of the market not as attractive seems to surface as a clear example of emerging patterns of self-organization.  Steven Johnson mentions that in cases like this the overall survival of the organism, in this case, the market, is dependent on the intelligence of the colony rather than on the individual parts, much like the behavior of a bee colony.  Members of a bee colony act in the best interest of the colony, much like the markets participants.

Tsukiji as a Benchmark

Although auctions are not as common as one might assume after reviewing Tsukiji’s framework, other markets such as the retail sector have displayed similar characteristics of high-level self-organizing patterns, emerging from low-level rules of functioning.

A clear example on the retail sector where high-order patterns of organization seem to have emerged, can be seen in the commercial districts of Shibuya, more specifically in the Shibuya 109 Fashion Department store.  The store is comprised of more than one hundred smaller boutiques that compete and cooperate during the summer sales (yasuuri or tokubai).  During the period of summer sales an innumerable amount of young saleswomen shout prices and brands in order to lure into their stalls the thousands of shoppers that roam through the 10-story building.  To the foreign visitor and/or the Japanese non-speaker, this activity might appear as purely chaotic screaming and shouting, but after careful observation (and some translation), the visitor might discern patterns of rhythmic price bidding and gestures which mark point-of-sales for merchandise.

A similar scenario occurs in the ground level of the Takashimaya Department store which during rush hours thousands of employees chant phrases like “Irasshaimase” (‘Welcome’), “Otamashi Kudasai” (“Please try some”), followed by simple remarks that describe the freshness, origin, and quality of merchandise being offered.  As in within the Shibuya 109 Department Store phenomena, these chants seem almost incongruous to the foreigner, but with closer examination patterns of rhythmic chanting at different tones and accentuations flood the store as customers roam from stall to stall.

The Tsukiji Market offers more than a glimpse into Japan’s cultural and economic life — it reveals a living system of emergence, where complex patterns of organization arise not from centralized control, but from countless local interactions bound by trust, repetition, and adaptation. What begins as a series of individual exchanges between fishermen, wholesalers, and buyers evolves into a coherent structure capable of sustaining one of the world’s most intricate food networks.

For architects and urbanists, this phenomenon is profoundly instructive. Cities, like Tsukiji, are not static constructs but dynamic organisms — responsive, adaptive, and continuously self-organizing. The intelligence of a city does not solely reside in master plans or top-down design, but in the subtle negotiations, behaviors, and informal systems that emerge from daily life. Recognizing and designing with these emergent dynamics, rather than against them, allows architecture to move from being a prescriptive act to becoming an enabling framework — one that supports spontaneity, resilience, and collective intelligence.

In this sense, Tsukiji is not merely a marketplace; it is a metaphor for the city itself — a reminder that true order often arises not from control, but from the creative interplay of chaos and cooperation.

Bibliography

1. Bestor, Theodore C.. 2004. TSUKIJI: The Fish Market At The Center of The World.  Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.

2. Johnson, Steven. 2001. EMERGENCE: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York, NY: Scribner.

3. Hensel, Michael, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock.2004. AD, Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies. Italy: Wiley-Academy.

4. CHUNG, Chuihua Judy, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong. 2002. The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2. Spain:Taschen-Harvard Design School.

5. http://edi.tohsui.co.jp/Web/index_e.html

6. http://www.marunaka-net.co.jp/maruna_e/index.htm

7. [1] Bestor, Theodore C.. 2004. TSUKIJI: The Fish Market At The Center of The World.  Los Angeles, California: University of California Press

8. [2] Hensel, Michael, Achim Menges, and Michael Weinstock.2004. AD, Emergence: Morphogenetic Design Strategies. Italy: Wiley-Academy.

9. [3] Johnson, Steven. 2001. EMERGENCE: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software. New York, NY: Scribner.

10. [4] http://www.tsukiji-market.or.jp/chuou_e/role.htm

11. [5] http://www.marunaka-net.co.jp/maruna_e/index.htm

12. [6] Bestor, Theodore C.. 2004. TSUKIJI: The Fish Market At The Center of The World.  Los Angeles, California: University of California Press.pp 192.

13. [7] CHUNG, Chuihua Judy, Jeffrey Inaba, Rem Koolhaas, Sze Tsung Leong. 2002. The Harvard Design School Guide to Shopping / Harvard Design School Project on the City 2. Spain:Taschen-Harvard Design School.

14. [8] Bestor, Theodore C.. 2004. TSUKIJI: The Fish Market At The Center of The World.  Los Angeles, California: University of California Press