Japan Press Weekly

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2016 September 28 - October 4 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

JCP Kasai pushes Abe gov’t to revoke approval for Tsukiji fish market relocation

Japanese Communist Party lawmaker Kasai Akira at a Lower House Budget Committee meeting on October 3 took up the issue of the Tokyo metropolitan government’s failure to properly deal with soil pollution at the new fish market site in the Toyosu district, urging the central government to revoke its approval for the planned market relocation.

Kasai referred to the fact that in 2007, then Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo’s government replied to him that the national government calls on the metropolitan government to offer a “full explanation” to Tokyoites as to the planned relocation of the Tsukiji fish market to Toyosu and take “all possible measures” to ensure food safety. Kasai asked Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, “Does the Abe Cabinet take the same position as this?” PM Abe said in response, “That’s right.”

A project to transfer a wholesale market needs to be approved by the Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries. The minister is supposed to seek the advice of the ministry’s policy council regarding whether to authorize the project.

The JCP parliamentarian pointed to the fact that the metropolitan government failed to place uncontaminated soil at the new market site in Toyosu as a countermeasure to the soil contamination. He asked, “When did the Fisheries Ministry learn this fact?” Fisheries Minister Yamamoto Yuji replied, “We’ve learned that through recent media reports.”

Kasai went on to point out that the ministry’s policy council discussed the relocation plan based on the metropolitan government’s documents which promised to lay fresh soil at the Toyosu market site and that the panel then advised the minister to give the green light to the project. “The materials submitted by the metropolitan authorities have turned out to be false. The Fisheries Ministry should call the policy council immediately, make a report on this issue, and have the council deliberate on the relocation plan again from scratch,” he stressed.

Past related article:
> Arsenic found in water covering underground space of new Toyosu market facilities: JCP Tokyo [September 17, 2016]