Kanno Koi Farm: Goshiki Sorted in Summer, Bought in the Snow

Most of the farms on our winter trip we visit as a buyer. Kanno Koi Farm is different, because the previous summer Zak had worked there. "I spent the summer here with him," he said of Kazuhiro Hirasawa, who runs the farm, and some of that summer was spent doing senbetsu, the sorting of thousands of fry down to the ones worth growing on. So when he came back in the snow to buy Goshiki tosai, he asked the obvious question. "You think there's ones in here that I was actually separating when they were this small?" Hirasawa: "Definitely, definitely."

It is the clearest example on the whole trip of why we go in person. Nobody picks fish better from a photo than the person who sorted them as fry.

Arriving

Kanno's tosai live in a greenhouse, and the day we got there Hirasawa was outside melting snow off it. Inside, the water in the ponds was darker than usual, which he explained before we asked: pull a lot of water from a well in a hurry and you pull dirt with it. He had also rigged a net over one pond to make a shower for the water coming in. Zak's reaction, "he's a genius," was only half a joke; a breeder's greenhouse is full of fixes like that.

Most of what we were there for had been ordered already, so the first job was going over those orders. Then he mentioned something Zak didn't know he had.

45cm tosai

Hirasawa had a metallic mix bred from Momotaro bloodline parents, and in another pond, siblings from the same parents that were already 45cm. First-year fish. "That's huge for a baby." He showed them on his phone rather than netting them, because lifting them in that water would have been hard on the fish, and gave his forecast without hedging: "They definitely will get a metre long."

Then came the exchange that happens at every good farm. Zak saw the best fish in the house and wanted them. "Oh, those are my tategoi," Hirasawa said, the ones he is keeping. "So I cannot have these. But maybe I can later, as he goes through them and sifts through them. Not everyone has unlimited space." That is how tategoi occasionally become available: not because a breeder changes his mind about the fish, but because he runs out of pond.

The Goshiki

The reason we come to Kanno is Goshiki, and the batch Zak chose from was the higher-quality group of Goshiki and Gin Goshiki, the Ginrin version. What sets them apart is the red. Zak's words: "I love these because they're really deep red." Hirasawa's, in Japanese, were that the beni is the best thing about his fish and that getting it that deep is very hard. He also had a theory about why this batch was good, and it was aimed at Zak: because you did the separating yourself.

Alongside the Goshiki, Zak was taking Kikusui and Kin Showa from Kanno, and a number of other fish. Hirasawa was busy, so the filming was kept to a few sample fish in a bowl. "The last thing I ever want to do is distract a breeder while he's working really hard just so I can take a video."

One thing we didn't ask him to do was explain Goshiki on camera; he had already shown it. Goshiki change a lot, and the darkness in the scales that makes a good one is the part that develops. If you want to know how that plays out for a buyer, the closest thing in our own experience is in how to choose a Kujaku, which comes from the same instinct: buy the fish for what it will be.

Hirasawa later went through his own prize-winning Goshiki with Zak, fish by fish, in episode 2 of What Makes Koi Beautiful?, and the variety as a whole is in our Goshiki guide.

How a Niigata breeder filters a greenhouse

Between the ponds, Zak stopped to explain the filtration, because it is almost the opposite of what most American hobbyists build. "This is Japanese filtration, the way they like to do it. It's all flow-through. Nothing's pressurised." A pump lifts water out of the pond and sprays it over a bed of media, which catches the solids, and the water simply runs back into the pond. Each pond has its own. The media is bio-balls. There are oyster shells in the system to buffer the pH. The water level is set by a standpipe, and pulling the pipe drains the whole pond. No pressure vessel, no backwash valve, nothing that needs electricity beyond the pump.

What came home

Goshiki and Gin Goshiki tosai from the batch above, plus Kikusui and Kin Showa. "I'm really excited to sell these in America, and maybe I will grow a few out myself. It's so much fun to see the beni develop." The afternoon ended at a barbecue, and the next day's filming started at Isa.

Kanno is also the farm whose name comes up when other breeders talk about Goshiki lines; Ozumi Ikarashi told us his Goshiki bloodline is a mix that includes Kanno and Kawakami. For a variety that changes as much as Goshiki do, knowing which farm's red is in the fish is most of what you can know.

Browse our Kanno koi, our Goshiki and Kikusui, or every koi we currently have available. For the rest of the trip, start with how buying koi in Japan actually works. Live koi ship Tuesdays and Wednesdays, anywhere in the USA.