What Makes a Koi Beautiful? Seven Koi with Takumi Miya of Miyatora

Most of the farms in this series are known for one or two varieties. Miyatora Koi Farm in Niigata is known for being different. In episode 3 of What Makes Koi Beautiful?, Takumi Miya sent Zak photos of seven koi from his family's breeding, and the two of them went through them one by one: a Kujaku crossed for its body, his father's best Sanke, a champion Shusui, a Ginrin Shusui Zak had never seen anywhere else, a prize-winning Doitsu Sanke, a Doitsu Showa bred out of Sanke, and a Beni Kikokuryu that came out of the mud pond looking like a different fish.

It is also the episode most about breeding. Almost every fish came with a story about how the line was made.

1. A Kujaku crossed for its body

The first fish looks like a Kujaku, and Takumi's first words were that it isn't one, not a pure one. He crossed Kujaku with Sakai's Super Mango bloodline, which Zak described as a very orange Benigoi, and he did it for one reason: body shape. It shows in the head, which Zak picked out as "really special," and in a frame that reached about 78cm at four years old before it went to a customer.

The red isn't the deepest, and Takumi was fine with that: "not so deep, but okay for me" and not pale either. What he pointed to instead was the fukurin, every scale clearly outlined. For a Kujaku, he said, "that's the most important point."

Then Zak asked something he didn't know the answer to: do Kujaku normally have motoguro, the black at the base of the pectoral fins? It depends on the bloodline, Takumi said, and there's a reason. To get deeper red, a breeder needs darker pigment in the line, and with darker pigment, motoguro comes too. Not a bad thing, he added. Just a trade.

This fish was the first generation. Takumi is now breeding its brothers and sisters to make the second, with no more Super Mango, refining the cross into a line of its own. If you are buying Kujaku, our guide on how to choose a Kujaku covers the rest.

2. His father's best Sanke

"My father's best product, maybe." Takumi's father bred a lot of Gosanke, and this Sanke was ten years old in the photo and reached 87 to 88cm at its peak. Zak's note was how well it had held up: "sometimes when they're ten years old, the quality goes down."

Zak pointed to the details he always checks. The red stops right at the nostrils. The black sits in separate patches on the white, tsubo-zumi, rather than piled on top of the red. On whether red around the eyes is a fault, Takumi said that judged as a pattern, white eyes are better. Zak's view is that if the red is balanced across the head, it works.

Both agreed on one thing: Sanke are the most difficult koi. "A lot of times now I see Sanke, just sumi, sumi, black, black, black, all around," Zak said. "It doesn't look like anything."

Breeding for beauty, or for the judges

The Sanke led to the most candid part of the episode. Takumi said the old breeders made many masterpieces, and that today's koi keep getting better as the judges see it, but have moved away from what breeders originally set out to make. "I really respect the older generations," he said: breeding for fun, and for beauty. Zak put it as the difference between subjective beauty, the fish you love, and objective beauty, the textbook kind a show rewards. Both matter. They aren't always the same fish.

3. A champion Shusui

The Shusui Takumi sent was photographed at two years old, the head still a little yellow-orange and the body turning whiter, which he put down to both age and food. Zak called it a good example of the variety: the red along the sides, and the line of large scales down the back, the "zipper," laid perfectly. "I think for a Shusui, this is perfect."

The record backs him up. It started at 36 Bu at the International Junior Koi Show and kept winning every year from two to five or six years old, up to 75 Bu. It now belongs to a breeder in Uonuma.

4. A Ginrin Shusui you won't see elsewhere

This is the fish that surprised Zak first. At one of Miyatora's events he was told he was getting Shusui, and found fish he had never seen: blue-indigo scales with orange over them, sparkling. "I was like, what the heck are these?" He bought four or five. They were Ginrin Shusui, and Zak had never seen one anywhere else.

The fish Takumi sent has a maruten head mark, deep red, red at the base of the pectorals (motoaka), and, above all, strong Ginrin. Good Ginrin comes from wrinkles in the scales, the same point Oyama made about Ginrin that lasts, and these have it.

How he made it is the long story. Takumi set out to make Shusui parent stock and crossed Shusui with other varieties, which gave him a lot of unusual kawarigoi. He added Ginrin to those, which is where Miyatora's Aragoke came from, along with a few red fish. Then he went back to Shusui, and this is the result.

5. Doitsu Sanke: what face sumi tells you

Another of his father's fish, this Doitsu Sanke won a special prize at the Nogyo-sai show a couple of years ago, at about 78cm. Zak called it textbook: separate sumi, sitting on the white. It is also proof of a point that came up with Kanno's Doitsu Showa in episode 2: good bodies are hard on Doitsu, and this one has one.

Zak asked about a little black on the face, which many judges mark down on a Sanke. Takumi's answer was the most useful single fact in the episode. It depends on the person, but if you want strong sumi, black on the face is natural, and "without sumi on the face, the body sumi is also weaker." Zak had heard that said of Showa, never of Sanke. Takumi's reasoning holds for both.

Zak also shared one of his own checks: he looks at the fins to judge skin. A head can run a little yellow, but yellow in the fins tells you more about the skin.

6. A Doitsu Showa that started as a Sanke

Miyatora has been developing Doitsu Showa for about ten years, and Zak noticed something about this one: not too much sumi, placed in patches almost like a Sanke. Takumi was pleased he'd seen it. The line started from Doitsu Sanke crossed with Showa, and the Sanke side still shows in how the black is placed. It is unmistakably a Showa, with good balance the length of the body, and a pattern that stops before the tail.

7. The Beni Kikokuryu that changed in the mud

The last fish is the one in the episode's opening. A Beni Kikokuryu, photographed at two years old in autumn, with very dark black, pure white skin and fins that weren't yet fully coloured. Takumi's view on the fins: on some fish the colour fills in later.

It did. Then Zak showed the next photo, the same fish straight out of the mud pond. The black had faded and the fish had gone a yellow-orange. "This and this, the same fish." Asked why, Takumi said maybe the bloodline. At three years old it was bought by a European customer who, standing at the tank, didn't recognise it as the fish he'd seen in the photos. The black has faded further since, which Takumi puts down to the skin thickening as the fish grows.

It is the clearest example we have of why Kikokuryu are hard. The black can change a lot from year to year. A good one sells easily; a bad one is very hard to sell, which is why Takumi doesn't breed them every year, and why Zak buys them carefully: "if it's too dark everywhere, no one will buy it." If a variety can change this much in one season, buy it from a farm you trust and expect it to surprise you. The same is true of Goshiki, in our Goshiki guide, and the mud pond's part in all of it is in our koi mud pond harvest.

What to take from it

• Breeders cross for body. The Kujaku went to Super Mango, a Benigoi line, to get a bigger frame. When a breeder makes a cross, body is often what they are after.
• Every gain has a trade. Deeper red on a Kujaku brings motoguro. Weaker face sumi on a Sanke can mean weaker body sumi.
• Check the fins for skin quality. A slightly yellow head is common. Yellow fins tell you more.
• Some varieties will surprise you. A Beni Kikokuryu can look like a different fish after one summer. Buy for skin, body and bloodline, not for this year's colour.

Asked for advice, Takumi said most hobbyists look at the bad points first and miss the good ones. Zak agreed: a friend told him the same thing when he started in koi, to look at what makes a fish beautiful before looking for faults. "How can you be happy with the koi if you're always looking for something negative?" Takumi's last word: "Please find your own way to have fun." For Zak, that is tosai and the harvest: "you're always surprised."

The rest of the series: episode 1 with Yusuke Ogata and episode 2 with Kazuhiro Hirasawa of Kanno.

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