I’ll have a dodo burger and some tuna steak to go, please －ドードーバーガーとマグロステーキを持ち帰りで－

“As dead as a dodo.”

Not content with wiping out a whole species of bird, we continue to mock its extinction.  We have turned the mass killing of this bird into an idiom, generally used as a joke.  “That politician will never survive the scandal.  He’s as dead as a dodo,” we say, and laugh.

The poor dodo, extinct since around 1683, only 70 or so years after its first contact with humans, isn’t laughing.

“As dead as a tuna fish.”

We could be saying that in a few decades.  According to a BBC article I read yesterday about Tsukiji fish market, famous for holding 4am auctions of freshly caught tuna, the mighty tuna is heading towards extinction.  Since the 1960s, numbers of Atlantic bluefin tuna have fallen by over 95 per cent.  Pacific bluefin tuna is doing only slightly better.

And the world’s human population keeps increasing.  And eating.

Perhaps if the governments of the world got together, they could come up with a plan to protect the tuna and other fish from over-fishing.  They could encourage everyone to eat more natto and tofu instead.  But how could you persuade a planet of murderous meat-eaters to go vegetarian?

Well, perhaps you could convince them that the fish were poisoned?  You could dump a load of mercury into the oceans, and then pour in a huge dose of radioactive materials from a nuclear power plant.  And then take the world’s largest fish market and move it to a chemically contaminated site.

The public would become terrified of the idea of eating fish.  And the seas would instead be taken over by the luxury yachts of the tofu and natto producers, getting rich on the world’s new appetite for vegetarianism.

This must explain what the Japanese government has been doing in recent years.  Their plan to move Tsukiji fish market to an artificial island in Tokyo Bay, which has been left contaminated by a former chemical factory now makes perfect sense.

I smell natto for dinner.  Bon Appétit! 

Vocabulary:

to wipe out – of a group, population etc., to kill every member

a species – a kind of living creature or animal

to mock – to make fun of; to laugh at

extinct – of a species, having no more living members (eg. Like the dinosaurs)

to dump – to throw away, especially in a messy or careless way

radioactive – producing radiation, or harmful invisible energy released by nuclear bombs etc.

contaminated – dirty; not clean or safe