The plan unveiled by Tokyo Gov. Yuriko Koike to relocate the Tsukiji wholesale market to the new site in the Toyosu waterfront area — while also redeveloping the Tsukiji site in five years without selling it off as scheduled — seems to raise more questions than answers over the relocation of the famous market, which she put on hold last year over ground soil and underground water pollution concerns at the new site. Koike needs to quickly flesh out the plan — disclosed just three days before campaigning begins for the metropolitan assembly election, whose outcome will be crucial for her own new party and her administration of the capital — to show that it will be a practical solution to the protracted mess over the relocation.
The aging Tsukiji market in Chuo Ward was initially scheduled to be moved to the Toyosu area of Koto Ward last November. Right on the heels of her election as governor in a landslide victory, Koike put that on hold in August, citing pending underground water tests at the Toyosu site, on which used to stand a Tokyo Gas Co. plant and where high concentration of toxic chemicals had been found.
Subsequent revelations that the metropolitan government had failed to cover the site with thick layers of clean soil to insulate the new market buildings from the pollutants, as had been advised by experts in the original plan, and findings of harmful substances in underground water samples that well exceeded environment standards (even though it was pointed out that pollution of underground water will not significantly affect safety of the market itself because such water would not be used in its operation) added to food safety concerns, throwing the market's relocation to Toyosu in limbo. Questions were raised over the ballooning cost of building the new Toyosu market, as well as the decision to move the wholesale market to a polluted site in the first place.