The Reason Behind Eel Price Increasing Every Summer

The price of eel has risen sharply this summer, and it had become a big news in this country, since Japanese people love to eat eel so much. It is known that eel has been consumed in Japan since thousands years ago, so it must had been rooted in Japanese culture.
             Especially on Edo era, due to Tokugawa`s reclamation works of Edo (current Tokyo area, when vast settlements project was build, eel become favorite labor`s food in Edo because of it’s nutrition. Eel rich in protein, vitamin A, vitamin E, and so on. And mostly Japanese believed that eel good for stamina. That’s the reason behind the drastically increasing consumption of eel during summer. And of course, it also affecting the price, even until now people always worries eel`s price in every summer.

 Doyo no Ushi no Hi, which directly translated as Doyo’s Ox day. This festival is tightly related to this fish, and also contributed a big amount of number to the increasing of eel consumption during summer. Though the festival day titled Ox, the food that traditionally eaten on this day is not Ox meat but eel .Doyo correspond to 18,or 19 days of the end each four seasons . So why isn’t it called the day of eel (Unagi no hi)? That’s a rather a tricky question, because that question take us back to many centuries ago. The festival originated many centuries ago in China, where the cycle of days was based on 12 day per week rather than 7. To help people remember the cycle of days,

 each day was assigned with animal, in the same way that the old calendar arranged with 12 animals. Somehow over time the day of the Ox came to the high point of summer, that is mean the hottest day of the year, which was pinpointed as being 18 days before the first day of autumn according to the old calendar. So during Doyo no Ushi no Hi, in Edo time until now, restaurants and shops sell a lot of eels.

This summer, the price of eel has also risen sharply as a result of poor catches of young eels, beside vast consumption. The life cycle of eel was a mystery until in 2010  Japanese researcher found out how to cultivate the egg of eel. However it is not suffice, still fisherman need to get a lot of young eels to meet the demand of eel in summer. And this summer young eels are not caught enough, and the price of eel sharply increase.

The Environment Ministry on September 13^th also announced worrying report, says that Japanese eel will be put on its Red List of threatened species. The Japanese eel will be designated as "vulnerable" — the lowest of three categories of endangered species by the International Union for Conservation of Nature classification. Government data show that annual catches of young eel for culturing has stood at a little less than 10 tons in recent years, sharply down from the historical peak of about 230 tons in the 1960s. The annual catches of adult eels have fallen below the 200-ton mark in recent years, also sharply down from nearly 3,400 tons in the 1960s. Some experts call for banning catches of adult eels and sharply reducing catches of young eel. Though the move will improve eel numbers, in the future it would be difficult to eat like we used to be.