Breeder: Hiroi
Hiroi Koi Farm (廣井養鯉場) is in Oguriyama, Ojiya, Niigata, founded by Teruchiyo Hiroi in 1938. It is run today by twin brothers Kazuyoshi and Nobuaki Hiroi, across roughly 100,000 square metres and more than 60 mud ponds.
Hiroi are best known for Goshiki and Ginrin Goshiki, and theirs have a particular character: notably light in colour as young fish, and staying lighter than most as they mature — which is a matter of taste rather than quality, and worth knowing before you buy. Alongside the Goshiki they breed Showa, Kohaku, Sanke, Kikusui and a wide run of Doitsu work — Doitsu Showa, Doitsu Sanke and Doitsu Ochiba Shigure.
Doitsu koi are the scaleless (or nearly scaleless) German-crossed forms, and they are their own discipline. With no scale grid to break up the pattern, colour sits on bare skin as flat blocks of pigment — cleaner and more graphic than a scaled fish, but with absolutely nowhere for a soft edge to hide. A good Doitsu looks drawn with a brush. A poor one looks smudged.
Hiroi koi available now
Everything here was imported by House of Koi. We chose almost every older koi individually at the farm, and those are one-of-a-kind: each listing carries video of that exact fish with its size, sex and year born, and closes when that fish sells. Tosai are bought both ways: we pick many out of the pond ourselves, and others come as a mix we chose at the farm, in which case the listing covers a group of young koi rather than one named fish.
Our Hiroi selection is Doitsu-heavy — Doitsu Sanke, Doitsu Showa, Doitsu Shiro Utsuri and Doitsu Ochiba Shigure — with Ginrin Goshiki, Ginrin Ochiba Shigure and Shusui alongside.
Live koi ship Tuesdays and Wednesdays, anywhere in the USA. Browse all available Japanese koi.
