These days, former tuna fisherman, Tsurizao Morita, spends his days belting out songs such as "Fish Heaven" and "Maguro", meaning tuna, to raise the profile of fish in Japan.
Mr Morita is part of a rock band called Gyoko (meaning fishing port), which has been engaged by a fishing trade group to help raise fish sales and nutritional awareness. During concerts, Mr Morita walks on to the stage wearing a costume with a real tuna head which he then slices up into edible pieces with a fisherman's knife.
While the Japanese have earned a global reputation in the past for being a fish eating nation, per capita fish consumption has actually been in decline, even falling below per capita consumption of meat for the first time in 2006, according to the Wall Street Journal. The average monthly expenditure on seafood fell 23 percent to US$74 in 2009.
The Japanese Government has now resorted to novel methods such as employing Mr Morita's fish rock band to encourage younger generations of Japanese people to eat fish.
Elsewhere, schools have undertaken a fish-related curriculum under the guise of teaching chopstick dexterity and fish anatomy to children.
Besides children, the elderly are finding it hard to eat fish due to the delicate but sharp bones. Retailers are now selling filleted fish to schools and hospitals as well as gourmet quality versions in supermarket.
Supermarkets all around Japan routinely a song, "Fish, fish, fish. You get smart when you eat fish. Smart, smart, smart. Fish, fish, fish. You get healthy when you eat fish. Healthy, healthy, healthy."
"Cooking and eating fish has to be as easy as heating up ham and sausage," the Wall Street Journal quoted Hiroshi Kanatani, a fish monger, as saying.
"It's a shame not to enjoy [fish]," said Yusuke Ochi, a recent seafood-convert. "We were born in a nation with a great gift of fish."
