Under the lights of the waterfront warehouse, tails twitched and bodies arched and writhed in death throes.

The clock overhead showed it was 3.15am. The floor was awash with seawater.

Yanagawa moved down a line of 20 boxes, each containing about 15 fish of varying values, lengths and states of coveted plumpness.

“Eeka! Eeka!” he chanted, holding out his long, loose, blue shirtsleeve and letting 20 or so bidders put their hands up it to make their secret bids and give their coded handshakes.

The pufferfish gulped in more air, ballooning out their white belly sacs in defiance at the auction at Shimonoseki, Japan’s chief fugu fish port, in Honshu’s most southwesterly part of Yamiguchi prefecture.

Yoshi Yanagawa is 56 years old and for the past 15 years has been the chief auctioneer (the seri or sekagi) at Haedomari, Japan’s only fugu market.

Throughout the fishing season from early September to April 29 (Fuku-kuyosai or ‘lucky day of thanksgiving’), it is open six mornings a week in the ancient port 700 miles west of Tokyo.

Shimonoseki is the capital of the fugu, also known as blowfish and globefish, the Japanese delicacy infamous for being so expensive and potentially so lethal.

“My job is unusual. Grown men squeeze my hand and fingers every morning!” said Yanagawa, whose father had a harbour-side job for life.

“It’s the traditional way of fugu bidding. I hold my fukuro zeri (slipover sleeve) out and they put their hands inside and tell me how much they want to pay. It’s all done by finger pressure.”

That morning a ton of fugu was auctioned off, packed into polystyrene boxes and taken away to the area’s 10 processing factories.

All are specially licensed to prepare and detoxify the fish, which is 270 times more poisonous than cynanide.

The poison in its liver can kill five men, but the ovaries, roe and kidneys are all just as deadly.

One milligram of tetrodotoxin is enough to cause agonising death within an hour.

Every plate is a work of art, a work of science

Yet fugu rubripes is still the epitome of gourmet dining in Japan and considered the king of fish. Tokyo restaurant-goers are prepared to pay 22,000 yen (€170) for a near-death experience.

“The Egyptians used the fish to play a primitive version of bowls,” said Toshiharu Hata, who runs the largest fugu wholesale business in Shimonoseki, founded by his father four decades ago. He also runs a small dockside blowfish museum.

“Captain Cook bought a fugu from the natives of New Caledonia and it killed a pig on board HMS Resolution,” Hata told me.

“The most famous human fatality happened in 1975 when Mitsugoro Bando VIII, an actor, was killed after eating four portions!

“In the daytime we give demonstrations of fish cutting.

“Fugu is served in transparent, paper-thin strips on painted porcelain plates.

“Master chefs cut them into chrysanthemum petals, Mount Fuji or into animals like peacocks, turtles and butterflies.

“Every plate is a work of art. Every dish is a work of science.”

We walked around the factory floor, watching his staff wash and process the precious fish.

“The best is tiger fugu,” he explained. “We ship them to New York. In 1988 we were allowed to export. Tiger sells at 40,000 yen a kilo, which will feed 20 people.

“Shimonoseki is the best place to eat it. You get more. Maybe 20 pieces compared to eight in Osaka and Tokyo.”

It was 6.30am and just beginning to get light as we drove into Shimonoseki city centre and into the Kanato-Ichiba fish market.

Stalls sold crabs, squid, sea urchins, clams and multi-coloured seaweeds.

“We only have one whale meat stall now,” my new friend lamented as we sat up at the counter of a little curtained-off booth in one corner of the market.

“The Tanabe Shokudu restaurant is the best in town,” said Hata, ordering two hot Saijo Town sakes.

He threw in a dessicated grilled fugu fin, or hirefuku, into my cup.

“Kampei!” he toasted as we clunked cups.

“Only one man has survived fugu poison and that was your Mr James Bond in From Russia With Love,” my friend smiled.

“No known antidote.”

I sipped a tiny sip. It tasted like chicken soup. I remained alive.

Then he took me eight miles or so to Jokamachi, the castle town in Chofu, where we walked down Samurai Street with its yellow-walled houses and 14th century lean-tos.

Amid the shrine grounds, Hata told me about the tenets of the bushido warrior class and the way of the bow and the horse.

Chofu in Chinese characters means the capital, Nagato.

“The Meiji Revolution of 1867 began here. This is the heart of the anti-shogunate movement. Here, Takasugi Shinsaki raised his army.

“Shimonoseki is the birthplace of modern Japan. Our country opened up to the West from here after a foreign flotilla bombarded the town and the disillusioned samurai persuaded the shogunate to accept foreigners.”

We had tea at the Hun Pan Lun Restaurant, the first place to serve fugu when in the 1880s Prime Minister Hoh Hirubumi allowed it into the markets again.

It had been banned after hundreds of soldiers had died eating it.

My guide looked up at the bronze fish sculpture commemorating the event and quickly assessed its value.

“That fish would feed one thousand. The biggest I have seen are 15 grams.”

He then took me to see another fugu statue, this time on top of a telephone kiosk by railway station. We walked around shops selling fugu lanterns, fugu kites and other fugu paraphernalia.

He dropped me back at my hotel – he had to go back to work and I had to go back to Tokyo.

We had known each other about six hours.

“Fugu means luck,” said Hata taking off his necklace and giving it to me.

It was a small, blue whistle in the shape of a now very familiar-looking fish.

He could not stop smiling. “You would have been a good samurai warrior. You eat fugu. You are brave. You have shown your courage. You fearlessly faced the enemy!

“This is a good-luck charm, I present it to you to remember me and my home by.

“When you have bad luck, blow your fugu whistle and good luck will come to your aid!”