Breeder: Torazo
Torazo Koi Farm — formally Torazo Urakawa Koi Farm (寅蔵浦川養鯉場) — is in Uragara, Ojiya, Niigata, at the foot of the Yamakoshi mountains. It was founded in 1917, which makes it one of the older farms still breeding, and Tsuyoshi Kawakami is the third generation to run it; he joined in 1978.
Torazo is a Kohaku and Sanke farm, with two named lines behind it. The Torazo Sanshoku goes back to work done in the farm's own history around 1949–52, and the Torazo Kohaku was established in the mid-1990s out of Dainichi and Murata stock. They produce Showa in smaller numbers. An 82cm, six-year-old Torazo Sanke took grand champion at the Nogyosai koi show in Ojiya in 2007.
The farm's stated method is to keep fewer fry and spend whatever it takes on parent fish — the opposite of volume breeding, and a reasonable explanation for why their Kohaku hold such a sharp line between white and red. On a Kohaku that edge, the kiwa, is most of the argument: a crisp scale-by-scale boundary reads as quality from across a pond, and a blurred one never stops looking unfinished.
Torazo 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 is all Ginrin Kohaku — the farm's core variety with reflective scaling over the top.
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