Japan
Japan is where the world’s very best Koi come from. There is little argument on this subject; it’s pretty much a fact. There are Koi breeders all over the world producing a good standard of Koi and sell many. Koi from Japan are a very small part of the worlds Koi market. I would estimate less than 10%. The rest of the Koi being either bred within certain countries or imported from places like Israel, China, Taiwan and Malaysia.
I have been to Japan around 30+ times up to now. I first visited when I was 16 years old. Since then I have rarely missed a year. Japan is one of the greatest places on the planet, and to be able to visit while doing the job I do is just an added bonus. The learning curve from visiting Japan is very steep and you do need to go on a few trips before you can really take everything in. It’s a place where no matter how good you are with Koi there are far greater people in Japan.
There are only certain times that a Koi enthusiast can visit Japan to see Nishikigoi.
January which is when the ‘All Japan’ is held you can also visit the mountains and Southern Japan, be warned that the snow in Niigata will be VERY bad. Snowfall is in the metres and not inches. Getting around is very difficult but possible. They clear roads in super quick time but with 10 feet walls of snow all around you it can get a little disorientating to say the least. It is a very nice and relaxed time to go though. The Breeders are very accommodating and welcome visitors like they always do.
March is a very busy period for dealers from around the world; this is a time when the breeders ‘Tateshita’ or General grade Koi are now ready. From when they were bred last May/June they have been in mud ponds and then harvested and kept in heated water all through winter. The breeders have selected the bulk of their ‘Tategoi’ (Koi with potential) the wholesalers are now buzzing all over the area to make sure they get the first pick of these Koi. They do not actually pick them but broker the deal for ponds of fish rather than individuals. The Wholesalers are VERY important to the Japanese breeders; imagine how many Koi sales places there are around the world that sells Japanese stock from say £5 upwards. There are a lot. In Europe alone there must be thousands. The typical medium size breeder in Japan has around 5-8 sets of parents. These will produce somewhere in the region of 4Million eggs, sometimes more! After the relentless culling process which all breeders do, in March they are left with about 5000 Koi. 500 of these Koi will be classed as their Tategoi. The other 4500 will be sold to wholesalers and dealers. The 4500 are not by any means low class. A Koi breeder only has so much room to grow their Koi in the summer, don’t forget they will breed again and need the vital fry ponds. A Medium breeder will have anywhere in the region of 50 Mud ponds including fry ponds which will usually be around 15 ponds. The rest are to grow last year’s Koi which are now ‘Tosai’ (1 year olds) the previous year’s ‘Nisai’ (2 year olds) the previous year’s larger fish which range from 60cms all the way to 90cms. They also must have separate mud ponds for their sets of males and females.
April time is the time when serious collectors can be seen in Japan, and high class dealers looking for very high class Tosai. The breeder who has his 500 tategoi still has too many, but they are all worth keeping if he had the room. Even if he acquired more mudponds the line must be drawn somewhere or it could go on and on. This would mean bigger Koi houses, more staff, more trucks and more bills. The majority of Niigata breeders are very small one man businesses who have help as and when they need it. The decision to go larger is sometimes not a choice so the lines must be drawn. I will give an example of Shintaro who will grow in the 400 out of the 500 Koi he has kept back as Tategoi. The remaining 100 pieces have been kept in a warmer climate all winter; they are 50% bigger than his Tateshita which he will hope to sell in Bulk so they are valued much higher. They are also in demand. The only problem being is the sex of the fish, at this size it is very difficult to determine between male and female. A lot has been written on the subject but sexing Koi by sight and feel is nowhere near 100% accurate. Guaranteed Tosai do get sold however. These are usually found in very high class auctions around Japan. The breeder will give a guarantee on certain fish which are sold. This is due to the size of the fish. Tosai can actually get to 50cms in a very short amount of time and sexing them then becomes easier. These Koi will cost though. A recent Auction in Japan sold a 1 year old Koi for over £25,000 and I’m sure there are more expensive examples being sold from individual farms. So clients would require some guarantees. Of course this is a rare occurrence and by no means standard practise but to find any Koi in Japan which is classed as ‘Tategoi’ will always be expensive, Someone once said “There are cheap Koi but there are no good cheap Koi” This is a very factual statement, In the Koi industry you really do get what you pay for.
May and June is breeding time in Japan. I have been lucky enough to experience this first hand and it is truly amazing. The work that goes into breeding the koi is huge and often forgotten. The breeding process is dont kind of naturally, the female is placed into a pond with 3 male fish to ‘chase’ her and get the party started! As soon as the female drops a single egg the breeder steps in and takes the males out. The female is then left for 45 minutes to complete ovulation. She is then placed into a bag with anaesthetic already mixed into it. When she is sedated the breeder simply picks her up and ‘pours’! With very little pressure the eggs just slide out with little effort. Its really great to see. The breeders preferred male is then taken and also sedated. The breeder then removes the milt manually with a pipette and mixed into ringers solution and mixed with the eggs. The reason the breeders use this exact method and dont let the Koi just spawn in the pond is because they can guarantee every egg will be fertilised, which will mean more fry to cull from. In Go-Sanke the Sanke and Kohaku are moved straight into a fry pond which are shallow mud ponds to hatch naturally and will be culled first after 40 days. Showa will be placed in hatching nets within a mud pond because they can be culled 5 days after hatching. Some of these pictures were taken when I stayed with Shintaro during the breeding season.
October is for me and most peoples the very best time to visit Japan. This is ‘Harvest time’!! The Niigata Mountains are buzzing with guests from most countries in the world, UK, Ireland, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Switzerland, France, Italy, America, Canada, Thailand, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Indonesia and many more…It’s a time to meet up with people who have made the journey many times before and people who are making it for the very first time. Every breeder in the area now has a harvest schedule; a lot of these can be visited by guests to the area. A lot of the mud ponds contain Koi which clients have left in Japan to grow over the summer. This is a common sight in Japan, the costs of keeping Koi in Japan is not expensive but the risk is down to the individual client. It’s a very worthwhile thing to do. A typical 2 year old Koi can be left and grown in the breeder’s mud pond for around 30,000Yen, larger Koi around 50,000Yen. Some breeders do charge a further premium to grow Koi in their ‘Number 1’ pond. In general it can be a very good way of getting the potential out of an expensive Koi which you could not do in an average Koi pond at home.
Harvest time also brings a lot of knowledge to people who visit Japan each year or every other year. First time visitors will see Koi like they have never seen before, real top end quality fish, whether they are within budget or out of budget. My point being that some of these Koi will go back into the mud ponds the following year and the same person who visits at the same time the year after and goes to the very same harvest will not only see the same Koi come out, they will also see how the Koi has progressed. How the body has developed, how the pattern has changed, how the skin is now better, how big this size of fish gets. It will help that person understand different breeder’s bloodlines and much more. This will give people an insight and far better knowledge for all future purchasing if this is in Japan or back home. It can be a much more than a ‘holiday’.
During the October and November Harvest season there are thousands of mud ponds which will be harvested. Some of the big breeders will pull 5 ponds per day, every day for 3 months! One example is Marusei Koi farm in Niigata which has around 400 mud ponds and only 5 members of staff! Each pond must be harvested and brought back to their numerous facilities to be sold. At this particular Koi farm you must go back 2 or 3 times each day because new fish are arriving all the time. The staff will start work at 3am and finish at 10pm; it’s a crazy work load. This work load will not ease up until the last visitor has left the mountains and the last box of fish has been shipped to one of the many destinations throughout the world.
Much has been said about the Earthquake of October 2004 in the Niigata area. This destroyed many Koi Breeders business and also cost far too many lives. A lot has been written in many articles since the event so I would like to write about the changes it has had upon the Japanese breeders.
My personal opinion is that every cloud has a silver lining. The Koi that are being produced now are far better than they were pre earthquake. The entire dynamic of the mountains has really changed. Most Koi breeders lost many parent Koi which if they wanted to stay in business they had to replace. A few years prior to the Earthquake in 04 the Koi breeders in the south such as Momotaro and Hiroshima Sakai were breeding much larger fish in comparison to the Niigata breeders, many in Niigata were worried about the situation and some were trying to take steps to fix this. In many ways the Earthquake did this for them. I will use Yamamatsu Koi farm as a prime example. He did breed good Koi before the Earthquake but they were of typical Matsunsouke bloodline, small and thin until they were old enough to fill out. The average size of his Nisai was about 50cms, which was the average in the entire area. After the Earthquake the whole farm changed its direction. They got new parent Koi and started to breed larger bodied fish, not just general grade Koi either, they were among the best Nisai ever to be seen. The combination of new mud ponds, new parent Koi and a fresh passion to fight have now made Yamamatsu Koi Farm easily in the top 10 Koi breeders in the world. This isn’t a one off case either. Many other Koi breeders have become much better than they were before, some still haven’t quite got there but they are so close.
When the Earthquake happened the area was devastated so badly. It has taken years and years to get the area back into shape where it’s all accessible. I travelled back to the mountains the following spring and was one of the very few people who were granted a pass which enabled me to drive through as far as was possible. No breeders were living in their homes, it was not safe enough. They were however allowed back to their homes and to keep the generators going to power up the ponds with the fish they had left. It wasn’t until 2006 that work actually got started again. Work prior to then be repairs and making area’s safe again so the re-building could carry on. In 2006 new roads and tunnels started to pop up, for people who had been visiting the mountains before the earthquake would have to double take at a lot of turnings to make sure they were going the right way. At the end of 2007 all the major routes were now accessible from all directions, new roads and tunnels were opened throughout 2008. The area is almost complete but it’s very different. Walls of concrete are still visible around the mountains; new damns and water routing are spread between many famous views from the past. Many people who lived in the mountains however did not return. The government build new houses on the ‘flat land’ in Nagaoka and re-housed many people who had lived in Yamakoshi for generations; it really was a terrible disaster. The pictures underneath were taken by Alan Coogan who found himself and his Wife Janet stuck in the mountains. They had to walk back to Nagaoka.
The good news now is that all the breeders are in full flow, new homes have been built for everyone who ran business from the area, and new schools have been built so the kids now have somewhere local instead of the 50minute drive they had to endure while repairs were being done. The whole area and project to re-build is a credit to the Japanese government. They could have re-housed everyone in brand new houses far cheaper than what they did by re-building the mountains. It was very lucky for the people living there whose families had lived there for 400 years and also very lucky for us who buy the very best Koi from this tiny area.
The Koi breeders now are going from strength to strength. The Koi being produced are far better than what were produced before the earthquake and the numbers of koi are growing and growing. The sights are still there for everyone to see, the famous layers of mud ponds, the breeders running around in tiny pickup trucks, the roads where you get half way down and then start to wonder why you even started to drive down there with sheer drops on both sides, the characters who are at the auctions and events. It is still very much a magical place to visit and still the best place in the world for those who like to Koi hunt.
I must admit that I am by no means an expert on Southern Japan. I was brought up with the mountains of Yamakoshi and never felt the need to visit the South. Even in Japan there is a North South divide. I do know however that some of the best Koi ever produced come from Southern Japan, most recent Grand Champions in Japan have come from this area, they get better weather which in turn they get better growth. Breeders such as Sakai Hiroshima, Momotaro, Omosako and many more who have produced some of the best Koi ever to be produced. Im sure in the very near future my experience in the south will develop.
