Back from Japan

I had barely got home when Haaki sat in the koi house on 18 October 2026 wanting to know everything. In episode 32 he had asked me before the trip what I was planning. Now it was about what had come of it. It became two episodes: the first about the breeders and the trade, the second about the trip with Prof. Harry Palm.

The breeders meet every week

Anyone who has dealt with Japan for a while knows the breeders' community in Niigata. Above it all stands the Shinkokai, the big association, and once a week small and large breeders sit together there. I believe they talk about very practical things: who has paid, who hasn't? How does the yen stand against the euro, the dollar, the Singapore dollar, and what does that mean for customers' purchasing power? The breeders are wide awake.

In between are the agents. I used to be one of them myself: you drive the dealers from breeder to breeder, translate, negotiate, take care of the evening, the export and finally the drive to the airport. Most of them drive the same roads again and again. This year I travelled further than many: as far as Chuetsu to the Nagoshi Koi Farm and to Fukui to the Kachi Koi Farm, whose breeder trained at Dainichi. Then I went with customers via Osaka to Hiroshima, by hire car to Omosako, Sakai and Oyama.

Who buys where

Few people do that. Most skip the big breeders such as Sakai, Dainichi or Momotaro because they are too expensive for them. They travel with a dealer and visit many second-tier breeders to cover a wide range of varieties. Alongside them is a completely different league: dealers who specifically look for that one outstanding kohaku or showa for a show or a top customer. And there are dealers like Ryuki Narita, who has now built his own fish house near Nagaoka. There, tour groups who only travel the north can also buy fish from the south, for example from Sakai or Omosako.

Something has changed with China. My impression is that koi now have to stay in quarantine longer there before they go on. That slows down the quick export of tosai in particular, and pressure from Chinese buyers eased somewhat this year.

Prices are still rising. You have to respect that too: the breeders heat with paraffin, and their costs are running away from them. This year I was there before the tour groups anyway, who only come in October. I only wanted to sort my fish, and that worked well again: I was allowed to sit next to Shigeru and sort with him in the second row.

Drawing lots instead of buying

The small breeders look at the big ones. When a big breeder offers 150 fresh nisai at an auction and individual fish fetch many millions of yen, the small one wonders how he can get a share of that. Those who are big enough organise their own auction. Others join forces: each breeder contributes six fish, there is a catalogue, and dealers bid on site or online.

I noticed something strange. The good kohaku, sanke and showa from breeders like Nogami or Torazo often went cheaply, while unusual varieties suddenly fetched crazy prices. Sometimes I would have liked to say: drive three streets further, go into the breeder's hall, you'll get the same fish for a third. But at auctions there is simply that moment when everything takes off.

At smaller breeders lots are often drawn: whoever draws the first lot chooses first, then the second, and only once you have your fish in the net do you talk about the price. In the past I dealt with that in ten minutes and drove on to the next breeder. With our facility here I could no longer afford a whole morning for it today.

Is the trip still worth it?

Haaki wanted to know whether, with so many fish on the internet, anyone still needs to travel to Japan. I think so. For a dealer without a big facility of his own, it is worth going in person, especially to smaller breeders and to niches where you find the best fish for your money. With a good agent who knows his way around, that still works. And choosing directly in the hall of an ordinary breeder and negotiating is quicker and usually cheaper than any auction. I would always recommend that.

Timing matters too. In October, when the whole world is in Japan, prices are high. In November they are still there, in January a little lower. For the Shinkokai in February they rise again, because everyone is hoping for a good deal. After that the selection is smaller and the best is gone. The question is what level you really need for your market.

What the professor took away

With Harry Palm I visited the natural ponds and explained the whole working cycle of a koi farm: aquaculture in the halls in winter, pond farming outside in summer, just as carp ponds were run in Germany too. How the ponds are maintained and disinfected and how it all turns through the year interested him greatly.

In return I learned something from him. Harry told me how carp came to Central Europe through the Cistercians, and that carp adapt very quickly to their waters, within just a few generations, much faster than salmon, for example, which tend to form fixed lines. For the two centres of koi breeding, Niigata and Hiroshima, that is an exciting question, even though good breeders like Sakai and Dainichi keep exchanging lines. Harry should explain the details himself one day, in front of our camera. That is his field, and I don't want to pre-empt anything.

The second episode tells of the trip itself: the weather in the mountains, the typhoon, the trout farm and Shigeru at the sorting bowl.

A cool summer and broken dams

From the plank above the automatic feeder you can hardly see anything in the natural ponds, just shadows moving towards the pellets. In 2025 the fish stood higher, in 2026 they stayed lower down. The summer in Niigata was cooler, Shigeru said too, and the tosai stayed a little smaller. From Hiroshima, on the other hand, you heard of a warm summer and very good results.

On top of that there was a lot of rain, and very unevenly: a few kilometres away one breeder had a good year, elsewhere dams broke, ponds drained and fish swam off into the next stream. When I was travelling alone for the first few days, quite a few roads were closed, and I had to drive through the woods on routes I hadn't taken for ten or fifteen years. One resolution did me good: every evening before sunset I stood on a different mountain, looked down on the mudponds, listened to the cicadas and read a little before driving to Ojiya for dinner.

Typhoon 25

In Japan typhoons don't get names but numbers. When Harry Palm wanted to come to me from Tokyo, typhoon 25 was just passing over the city. Harry took the shinkansen one or two hours before the storm really hit, and I picked him up at the station in Nagaoka. His colleagues in Tokyo later told him on the phone that he had got out just in time.

The Tani Koi Farm was under water, and fish were washed into the rice fields. Breeders from Niigata drove to Tokyo to help gather the fish from the fields again. That impressed me.

The trout farm

On the way back we visited the trout farm Bram had put us in touch with: aquaculture on an industrial scale, aiming at 3,500 tonnes of fish a year, with technology from Norway and Iceland, with huge sorting machines and fish pumps. A separate article tells that story.

Nets, craftsmanship and selection

Haaki asked what the aquaculture professor found surprising about koi breeding. Professors have their speciality, and Harry's is parasitology: on trypanorhynch tapeworms he is considered one of the leading experts worldwide. With carp he often said: oh, so that's how you do it. Even at our facility he was delighted when Frank and I showed him how we fish out a tank with two poles and a lead line. I have our landing nets and nets made in Japan. That is equipment you can't get here from an ordinary net maker, because with an ornamental fish not a single fin may bend.

He was surprised at how much still has to be sorted. He thought the lines had long been so stable that a showa spawning would produce almost only showa. But because we want ever bigger, more voluminous fish, lines are crossed and back-crossed again and again, and so there is a lot left to sort.

Shigeru holds every fish in his hands

At the time we were there, Shigeru sits from morning to evening and takes every fish into his hand individually. Whatever comes off the lorry, he sorts through: he takes out his tategoi for his own tanks and divides the rest into A, B and C quality. And after two or three weeks in the clear water of the concrete tanks he could almost start again, because on moving from the cloudy, mineral-rich mudpond the fish change abruptly once more.

With kawarimono it is even more work. At first they were more of a sideline at Dainichi; today there are dedicated larval ponds for them because so many customers ask for them. Dark fish go back into the mudpond for another three weeks, get a place in the sun, and then they are sorted again. Shigeru's special point: long, thin kawarimono over a metre, many can do. But a proper face like a kohaku or showa, plus volume, only a few can do that. And such broad fish have to be kept warm in their first winter, otherwise they won't show that body.

Our new nisai

Our tosai have had their birthday and are now called nisai, and the new tosai are on their way. An ordinary breeder in Niigata has nisai of 45 to 50 centimetres. A few years ago we already had nisai of 68 or 70 centimetres with great volume, and there will be exceptional fish like that again. Anyone who has a good indoor system of their own can also get a young fish of six to eight months from us and see how far they can take it. Haaki did exactly that two or three years ago and got his fish almost as big as our average.

Visitors are often surprised at how big the fish and the facility really are. That hardly comes across in the videos. Perhaps we will hold an open day one day, with disinfection tubs and everything that goes with it. Until then there are the regular groups who visit us every year on their holidays.

Torazo expands, China builds big

At Torazo, Tsuyoshi has changed a lot: new fish houses, new land, new mudponds. We drove out with Harry Palm and had a look. At half past five in the morning I was out with the Dainichi lads fishing out ponds anyway. I won't let anyone take that pleasure from me, and at eight I was having breakfast with Harry.

Finally Haaki and I talked about China. Huge farms have sprung up there, ten times bigger than in Japan, and Chinese suppliers are recruiting customers worldwide. I fear it will go the same way as our car industry: first learn, then build big at home, with a great deal of state support. The top product from Japan will remain, I think. But across the broad market there will be a clear-out, and then the question is where prices will go.