part of the Throwback Thursday series
Some photographs preserve a place. Others preserve a moment that can never quite happen the same way again.
This week’s Throwback Thursday takes me back to Tokyo in 1995, when I visited the legendary Tsukiji Fish Market. Long before travel photography became something we documented instantly on our phones, I was walking through this extraordinary working market with a camera, trying to capture what it felt like to be there.
And then I encountered this gentleman.
Standing among trays of seafood, boxes and hanging market lights, he proudly held up a fish for my camera. I can’t tell you his name or what became of him after that morning, but nearly 31 years later, his photograph still transports me back to Tokyo.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that I was also photographing a chapter of Tsukiji history that would eventually come to an end.
A Market With Nearly a Century of History
Tsukiji’s story actually began with disaster. The Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923 destroyed Tokyo’s historic Nihonbashi Fish Market. The fish market was subsequently relocated to Tsukiji, with the new central wholesale market beginning operations there in 1935.
By the time I arrived in 1995, Tsukiji had already been operating for about 60 years.
It wasn’t created as a tourist attraction. This was a working market, supplying seafood and other foods to restaurants, retailers and professionals throughout Tokyo. That working environment is one of the things I love most about this photograph. The boxes stacked behind the fishmonger, the other workers going about their business, the seafood displayed in the foreground and those industrial lights weren’t scenery created for visitors.
This was Tsukiji at work.
And somehow, for the few seconds it took me to take this photograph, I became part of the scene.
Then Everything Changed
For decades, Tsukiji became internationally famous, particularly for its seafood trade and tuna auctions. But the aging facilities eventually gave way to plans for a modern replacement.
On October 6, 2018, the inner Tsukiji wholesale market officially closed.
The wholesale operations moved to the newly constructed Toyosu Market, which opened that October. Around 900 businesses made the move to the larger, modern facility. Today, Toyosu carries on much of the wholesale seafood activity—and the famous tuna auctions—once synonymous with Tsukiji.
That means the working wholesale market I experienced in 1995 no longer exists at Tsukiji in quite the same form.
But here’s the part that makes me want to return.
Tsukiji Didn’t Disappear
While the inner wholesale market relocated, the surrounding Tsukiji Outer Market stayed.
In 2026, Tsukiji remains very much alive. Its narrow streets are still filled with hundreds of businesses selling fresh seafood, produce, dried foods, Japanese knives, kitchenware and prepared foods. There’s even a newer fresh-food facility called Tsukiji Uogashi, with around 60 shops. (Go Tokyo)
So you can still go to Tsukiji.
You can still eat incredibly fresh seafood.
You can still watch food professionals at work.
And, yes, there are still fishmongers.
Photography etiquette has changed—or at least become more explicitly defined. Today’s official visitor guidelines specifically ask visitors to get a shopkeeper’s permission before taking photographs, something I would certainly keep in mind if I returned with my camera.
The Photograph I’d Love to Take 31 Years Later
Looking at this old photograph now makes me wonder what it would feel like to stand in Tsukiji again.
I wouldn’t expect to recreate 1995 perfectly. I don’t think I’d want to.
Instead, I’d love to walk those streets with this photograph in my hand and see what remains. Perhaps I’d even find a fishmonger willing to pose with the day’s catch so I could create a 1995-and-2026 then-and-now photograph.
And I’d visit Toyosu, too.
One location could show me what remains of the Tsukiji I remember, while the other could show me what that legendary market became.
That’s one of my favorite things about old travel photographs. Sometimes you discover that you weren’t simply photographing your vacation.
You were photographing history.
Thirty-one years later, this fishmonger is still proudly holding up his fish—and I’m still incredibly glad I pressed the shutter.
Have you ever returned to a place you photographed decades earlier and tried to find the exact location again? And if you visited Tsukiji before the wholesale market moved in 2018, I’d love to hear what you remember.
