Breeder: Shinoda
Shinoda Koi Farm (篠田養鯉場) is in Oguriyama, Ojiya, Niigata, founded in 1952 and run today by Shinoda Masanori. The farm works around 50 mud ponds across roughly 80,000 square metres.
Shinoda's main focus is Hi Utsuri — the red-and-black Utsurimono, and one of the harder varieties to get right. The farm also breeds Ginrin Showa and Doitsu Kohaku, Sanke and Showa. Their Ginrin Showa line descends from a Grand Champion they won with at the 2000 All Niigata Nogyosai koi show and then kept back as a parent fish, which is the kind of decision that separates a breeding farm from a sales farm.
A good Hi Utsuri is judged on the sumi: it has to wrap the body in bold, well-placed blocks rather than scattered flecks, with a clean motoguro at the base of the pectoral fins, and the hi underneath has to stay deep and even rather than fading patchy as the fish grows. It is a variety where a mediocre example looks muddy and a good one is unmistakable across a pond.
Shinoda 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.
This collection runs deep on exactly what Shinoda does best — Hi Utsuri, including tosai — alongside Ginrin Showa, Ginrin Kohaku and Doitsu Sanke.
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