Breeder: Marusen Kobayashi
Marusen Kobayashi Koi Farm (丸仙小林養鯉場) is in Nakaie, Uonuma, Niigata, run by Naoto Kobayashi across around 30,000 square metres of rearing ground fed by mud ponds and spring water. The Marusen prefix matters — Kobayashi is a common name among Niigata breeders.
The farm's documented reputation is for Shiro Utsuri, with Showa and metallic Kawarigoi alongside.
Marusen Kobayashi 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 Marusen Kobayashi collection is almost entirely Ginrin Aragoke — what the hobby calls dragon scale — including a deep run of tosai, plus a Ginrin Orange Kohaku.
Aragoke is worth understanding, because it is a scale type rather than a colour variety, and it is genuinely uncommon. Instead of the fine, even Ginrin sparkle laid across normal scaling, Aragoke scales are enlarged, raised and irregular — armoured rather than beaded, catching light in broad plates down the flanks. On a young fish it reads as texture; as the koi grows and the scales enlarge with it, it becomes the whole character of the animal. It is not a variety that competes in the Gosanke classes, and it is not trying to. It is bought by people who want a fish that looks like nothing else in the pond.
Live koi ship Tuesdays and Wednesdays, anywhere in the USA. Browse all available Japanese koi.
