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Tuna is found throughout the world's temperate oceans and is probably the most popular canned fish. (Hughes Food History Archives)
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The Japanese prize tuna meat and consume great quantities, fresh, raw, and also cooked. The tuna they use is known as bonito. Using a centuries-old practice of drying some part of the catch, the Japanese process tuna into flakes with which they season their food. This is a Japanese bonito flake processing center in the late 18th century. (This hand colored print was published originally in Nihon Sanka Meisan Zue. We found it in The Illustrated History of Humankind --- New World and Pacific Civilizations published by the American Museum of Natural History.)