Japan Celebrates Responsible Seafood Production in Truly Unique Style

Celebrities, cooking classes, and a fish face competition: just some of the ingredients of another fun, educational and truly unique Sustainable Seafood Week in Japan, which took place in October.

This was the sixth annual event in Japan, run jointly by ASC and MSC to raise awareness of responsible seafood production and featuring events for all ages around the country.

“Every year this event grows and it’s great to see more and more people learning about responsible seafood,” said Koji Yamamoto, ASC Japan General Manager. “There was a real variety of events throughout the campaign, but they all had the same intention: to make people as passionate about responsible seafood as we are, so hopefully they will share that passion with others. At every event we wanted to let people find out the importance of these issues, and how they can do something about it by looking for the ASC and MSC logos, while making sure they also had a lot of fun.”

The opening event took place at Kasai Rinkai Aquarium on October 8, and set the tone with a high energy day featuring popular entertainers getting the assembled audience and journalists enthused with fun activities about a hugely important topic.

Popular entertainer Naoki Tanaka from Yoshimoto Kogyo were among the guests, learning about marine resources and responsible seafood in a quiz, and taking part in a fish face selfie competition.

There was too much to squeeze into just one week, with workshops and activities taking place around the country over the following weeks. These were targeted at seafood lovers of all ages: a class of elementary school students learned about seafood and environmental issues at one event. At another, high school students took part in seafood cooking classes. Having learned about the importance of responsible seafood, the participants were then lucky enough to learn how to best prepare some delicious ASC and MSC certified ingredients.

Gift bags including souvenirs, stationary from ASC, MSC and just a few of the 77 corporate sponsors and supporters of the campaign, were handed out at events to give consumers something to help remember the important issues around environmentally sustainable seafood.

As a significant producer and consumer of seafood, Japan can play an important role in helping to spread responsible practices in the industry. ASC has a growing presence in the country, and as well as a number of certified farms, an increasing number of retailers and restaurants are embracing the ASC logo. Next year’s Tokyo 2020 Olympics will also be serving both ASC and MSC seafood.