A fishing village formed at Misaki during the Onin years in the fifteenth century, when fishermen from the Kii peninsula came up seasonally and eventually settled in groups. By the end of the Meiji era it had become a base for tuna boats, and it has been one ever since.

Two geographic facts explain the port. It sits at the tip of the Miura peninsula, so the running distance to the grounds is short. And Joga-shima lies across its mouth, breaking the weather. A harbor needs shelter and proximity, and this one was handed both.

From the late 1960s onward the boats modernized and freezing technology moved fast. Once a catch could be frozen aboard and carried home intact, the fleets went further out, which is how a small harbor on the Pacific ended up connected to fishing grounds on the other side of the world. In 2018 a wholesale market handling only frozen tuna opened here.

Around the port the restaurants are lined up, and what they serve is sashimi, simmered head, cheek, every part of the animal. It struck me walking through that the technology of going far away has been converted, here, into the shape of a town. The freezers went to sea and the streets grew back inland.