Benigoi Koi: How to Judge an All-Red Koi

A Benigoi has no pattern to hide behind. What Yusuke Ogata looks for in an all-red koi: fins red all the way through, a red belly, no white anywhere, and no uneven colour.
By House of Koi Team
4 min read
Ginrin Benigoi koi, Otsuka bloodline, at House of Koi in Miami

Zak will admit it on camera: Benigoi are hard for him to appreciate. A lot of Americans look at an all-red koi and see, in his words, "just a big goldfish." In Asia they are very popular, and at Ogata Koi Farm in Fukuoka they are one of the farm's specialties. So when Yusuke Ogata picked out seven of his koi to walk us through, he put a Benigoi on the list on purpose. "Everybody asks me which Benigoi is good," he said. "That's why I picked Benigoi, to explain how to look for beni."

This is what he told us, and how we look at the Benigoi that come through our Miami shop.

What a Benigoi is

A Benigoi is a koi that is red from nose to tail, with nothing else on it. No white, no black, no metallic shine. Beni is the Japanese word for the red on a koi, and on a Kohaku or a Showa that red is one element among several. On a Benigoi it is the whole fish.

That is what makes the variety hard to buy well. On a patterned koi, a good pattern can carry an ordinary fish for a while. A Benigoi has no pattern to hide behind. Either the red is right, everywhere, or it isn't.

Yusuke Ogata's checklist

Zak had asked Mr. Ogata, Yusuke's father, the same question a year earlier: how do you know which Benigoi is good? Yusuke gave the same answer his father did, and he gave it first.

  • The fins. "The most important thing is fin." An Ogata Benigoi is red all the way through the fins: "No white here, no white here." When they sort the young fish, any one with a small white patch on a fin is taken out and not sold as a Benigoi. You want red all the way to the tips.
  • The belly. You can't see it in a top-down photo, but the stomach has to be red too, not white. Zak asked why it matters if nobody sees it, and answered his own question: you see it every time the fish comes up to eat. "More red," was Yusuke's summary.
  • No mura. Mura is unevenness. The red has to be the same depth everywhere you look, with no pale patches and no dark spots. Zak zoomed into the photo of the fish Yusuke chose and couldn't find one. "The red is perfect everywhere you look."
  • Fukurin. The skin between and around the scales. It is hard to see in a photo, but it is part of what makes the red look deep rather than flat.

Underneath all of that, the usual rule: body first. The fish Yusuke showed us was five or six years old, somewhere between 80 and 90cm, with a head Zak called "super wide." A Benigoi is a big, plain fish, and the frame is most of what you are looking at.

Why this is the same test as every other koi

What Yusuke described is beni quality, and beni quality is what separates a good Kohaku from an average one too. Clean edges, even depth, no bleeding, no patches: on a Kohaku you check those things along the edge of the pattern. On a Benigoi there is no edge, so you check them everywhere. If you learn to read red on a Benigoi, you get better at reading it on everything else, which is the reason Yusuke chose the fish.

It also tells you what a breeder is looking for. White in the fins or a white belly is not what you want in a Benigoi. You want red all the way to the tips.

Ginrin and Pearlscale

Benigoi also come as Ginrin Benigoi, with reflective scales laid over the red, and as Pearlscale Benigoi, where the ginrin looks like pearls. The shine gives the eye something to do that a plain Benigoi doesn't, and it is the version American customers warm to fastest. The judging is the same underneath: fins, belly, evenness, body. Ginrin adds one more question, which is whether the sparkle will hold as the fish grows; Oyama explained that to us on the trip.

Plenty of farms breed Benigoi, not only the ones known for them. Ours have come from Otsuka, Maruhiro and Sekiguchi as well as Ogata. Each one is listed individually with video of that exact fish, its size, sex and year born.

Keeping the red red

A Benigoi shows water problems the same way a Shiro Utsuri shows them in its white: the colour dulls before anything else goes wrong. Stable water, a buffer that doesn't crash, and a quarantine period for every new fish are the whole programme. Our notes on what your test kit numbers mean and quarantining new koi cover it.

And if you are still not sure you like Benigoi, that is allowed. Zak wasn't either. The rest of the conversation with Yusuke, including the Showa, the Shiro Utsuri and the story behind Ogata's black Budo Goromo, is in our write-up of Ogata Koi Farm.

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