The Narita Family of Koi Enthusiasts

My father’s family home has been running a fish farm in Toyama Prefecture with over 150 years of history, originally dealing with the breeding of edible carp. Koi are said to have originated in Niigata, where animal protein sources were scarce, making carp a valuable source of nutrition. Released into rice fields during the summer, the carp grew large and helped by eating harmful insects.
Among these black carp, white or brown carp would occasionally be born, and winter gatherings began to be held where people showed off these unusual fish. As each person brought the koi they were proud of, someone must have wondered, “What kind of koi would be born if a white one were bred with a red one?” In this way, Nishikigoi breeding began to flourish. All Nishikigoi trace their roots back to black carp, but today more than 100 varieties exist. That red-and-white koi could emerge from black carp can only be described as a miracle.

Narita Koi Farm specializes in the sale of Nishikigoi. There are trends in popular varieties, and some customers seek unexpected or unusual types, so in order to offer a wider selection, we currently work with around 50 to 60 breeders.
I once considered going into production myself, but I concluded that production should remain production, and distribution should remain distribution. It is simply not realistic to do both. Breeders play the artisan’s role of creating Nishikigoi, while distributors like us take the koi they produce, refine them further, sell them beautifully, and provide proper aftercare. These roles should be clearly separated. I believe it is impossible to do everything from breeding to sales to aftercare well. That is why I feel strongly about focusing on sales alone.

The Koi Customers Desire Are the Good Koi

I have loved freshwater fish since I was a child. I started helping with my father’s work in elementary school, and even then I already had my own customers who would only buy the koi I recommended. Now I understand how they felt. People involved in business inevitably have desires and make all kinds of calculations. They may recommend the second-best koi in order to save the best one for another customer. But children do not think that way. A child honestly says a koi is good if it feels good, and bad if it feels bad. I think that is why people trusted my words even though I was just a child.

My father never taught me what makes a good koi. As a child, when customers looked at koi I had raised and said, “This koi is wonderful” or “This is an amazing fish,” I naturally came to think that was what a good koi meant. I do not believe that the definition of a good koi written in books necessarily reflects reality. “The koi customers want are the good koi.” Since I was young, I found myself naturally searching for koi that made everyone say, “This is a great koi.” That feeling has never changed.
Brand and breeding process are important, of course, but in the end, what matters most to us as distributors is not whether the pattern is technically good or bad. What matters is selling koi that customers truly love. Looking back, I think I had already been thinking from a young age about “having koi that match the customer’s needs.”

Koi as a Symbol of Peace

Most freshwater fish die when the water temperature exceeds 30°C, but koi can be kept in water temperatures ranging from about 5°C to 33°C, making them easier to raise than many other fish. Their price range is also broad, from around 100 yen per fish to several million yen or more.
Some fish are territorial and become aggressive when others of the same species enter their space, but koi do not fight among themselves and rarely attack other species. In that sense, koi can be called a symbol of peace.
Some people say koi have a bad temperament because they peck at goldfish tails, but koi are not trying to attack goldfish. They simply feel the urge to peck at anything fluttering. Among goldfish, wakin do not have fluttering tails and have a tail shape similar to koi, so koi do not peck at them.

Koi can remember both people’s voices and footsteps. They do not become startled by the footsteps of the person who usually feeds them, but they may react nervously to the footsteps of someone else. If you clap your hands before feeding them at the same time every day, I think they can learn that routine in as little as three weeks.
Although Nishikigoi are familiar to Japanese people, most actually know very little about them. In fact, people overseas may know more about koi than many Japanese do. Perhaps that is because koi are often seen as a rich person’s pastime, something only for people living in luxurious houses with garden ponds. I find that reality very unfortunate.

The “Beni Kikokuryu” That Left a Strong Impression

To me, one of the greatest charms of Nishikigoi is that no two are ever exactly alike. Even a single-colored golden koi differs completely from another in the arrangement of its scales and every other detail.
The koi that left the strongest impression on me was the Beni Kikokuryu. In past koi shows, it is the only koi outside the Gosanke—Kohaku, Taisho Sanshoku, and Showa Sanshoku—to have won the overall grand championship. Normally, black overlays the red, but in this fish the black entered sharply along the outline of the red, and when I first saw it, I was stunned.
In fact, that pattern reached its peak of beauty only in that brief moment at the show. Koi patterns are constantly changing, and sometimes that level of beauty lasts only two or three days, or perhaps a week at most. A koi show is not a contest of past beauty or future beauty, but of beauty in that very moment. Because this koi perfectly matched that instant, it broke through the industry’s conventional wisdom that only Gosanke could ever win the overall grand championship.

Compared with the high-priced Gosanke, there are fewer breeders working with Beni Kikokuryu and fewer fish produced, so even a magnificent specimen does not necessarily command a very high price. However, its rarity is exceptionally high, and in many cases foreigners pay more attention to such varieties than Japanese do, discovering new value in them.
Some people say that Japanese no longer have the financial means to keep Nishikigoi, but I do not see it that way. Around 2010, the export value of koi overseas was already substantial. From around that same period, interest in Cool Japan—including koi, bonsai, and Japanese gardens—began to rise, inbound demand increased, and overseas visitors started spending more money in Japan. The popularity of Nishikigoi grew as part of that same flow.

If someone has bonsai, they begin to want a Japanese garden, and when people think of a Japanese garden, they think of Nishikigoi. As koi became more popular, Japan’s production capacity was no longer enough to meet worldwide demand. When supply falls short, prices rise. And when more people become interested in koi, more people begin wanting even better koi. That is how the number of foreign participants in koi shows increased. It is not that fewer Japanese are keeping koi; rather, the growth of koi enthusiasts overseas has forced Japan’s koi industry to respond to a changing global market.

China’s Koi Production Is Rapidly Catching Up

At present, Japan is still the world leader in Nishikigoi production, but while Japan has around 500 breeders, I hear that China has around 1,500. Even if Japan’s average level remains higher, in my personal opinion, the top three breeders in China have already reached a technical level that would place them among the top ten even in Japan.
China’s top breeders come to Japan, purchase high-quality and expensive koi, and use them as parent fish. Of course, breeding also depends on intuition and luck, but if you pair an excellent male with an excellent female, the probability of producing excellent offspring becomes much higher. Chinese breeders are steadily taking outstanding parent koi back with them, but there is still a major difference between Japan and China. Even if a breeder currently has a successful male-female pairing, if that male dies three years later, that bloodline disappears. Japanese breeders, by contrast, often have multiple males and females from the same lineage. So even if their first-choice fish dies, their second- and third-choice fish remain, allowing them to continue producing the same quality. Japanese Nishikigoi production has tradition, and with that tradition comes the technical ability to keep producing excellent koi over time.

Ideally, we would buy koi from Japanese breeders and sell them as part of Japanese culture. But for us, the most important thing is the customer’s needs. If the day comes when customers begin saying, “Chinese koi are better,” then I would buy Chinese koi and sell them. I sincerely hope Japan remains the world’s leading producer of Nishikigoi, but I do not intend to cling to Japan alone. What I always think about is continuing to provide the good things that customers truly want.

Expectations for the Next Generation of the Nishikigoi Industry

For the entire koi industry, including both breeders and distributors, the major challenge is human resource development. If someone works with me in the koi business for many years, the way they judge good koi will probably gradually come to resemble my own. But every person has their own preferences and their own way of thinking, and there is no need for anyone to become exactly like me. Even if the basic standards are the same, one person may prefer a brighter red, while another may like scales with more rounded coloration around the edges. If two koi are otherwise similar, it is only natural that preferences will differ.
In the restaurant business, a recipe allows a certain consistency of taste. But with koi, when the breeder changes, the result can become something entirely different. For any breeder, it is difficult to preserve exactly the same result over decades.

I have taught my son nothing, and I do not plan to teach him in the future either. That said, I do hope to pass the business on to him as early as possible.
My son entered this work after graduating from junior high school, and he already has his own customers. But he needs to find customers whose tastes match his own style. At the same time, he must also achieve excellent results at koi shows and learn what kind of koi anyone would recognize as truly good. He needs the ability to identify and raise koi that everyone would agree are excellent, and at the same time, to buy from breeders the koi that match his own taste and build a clientele who want exactly those fish.

This is something I must not teach him. If I do, there is a risk that he will only be able to sell to my customers. Unless he can develop new customers who look at the koi he selects and say, “That is a good koi,” the business cannot grow. What matters is how seriously he approaches his work and how much experience he accumulates over time.

Bringing a Fresh Breeze to the Industry

Going forward, the entire industry needs to broaden the base of Nishikigoi enthusiasts. The image of koi as a rich person’s pastime remains strong, and that sense of exclusivity makes it difficult for new people to enter. Unless we appeal to a wider audience—including the fact that koi can be kept relatively easily—the domestic market will continue shrinking. To increase the number of enthusiasts, we need to think about new ways of presenting Nishikigoi. In recent years, Art Aquarium exhibitions that present goldfish almost like works of art became a major topic of conversation. There were apparently voices within the goldfish industry criticizing them as improper, partly because many goldfish died quickly. That is certainly a problem. Even so, they received major media attention and attracted enormous public interest. In that sense, I believe they were a net positive for the goldfish industry. Even with their negative aspects, they undeniably changed people’s image of goldfish and increased public interest in them.

Like Art Aquarium, I believe Nishikigoi too should not only be displayed as fish themselves, but could also become material for artistic works. Japanese people tend to resist that idea, but people overseas often accept it without hesitation, reacting with honest surprise and delight, as if to say, “So this is the approach.” Perhaps Japanese people are too conscious of preserving tradition. There was one hit product overseas that moved me deeply. It was a plastic soccer ball with several holes in it, filled with koi food and thrown into a pond. As the food falls out through the holes, the koi gather around it, and it looks as if they are playing soccer. I would love to see that kind of playful enjoyment spread in Japan as well. At the same time, one reality of today’s koi industry is that some people are content to keep it a closed world. Even if only little by little, I believe we need to incorporate new ideas and new approaches.

Daisuke Sugiyama has a unique perspective shaped by growing up overseas. For the Nishikigoi industry to continue developing globally, we need new ideas and the action-oriented ability to bring them to life. One day, I hope to open a Nishikigoi aquarium in Japan, complete with cafés and other features, so that more people can discover the world of Nishikigoi and become interested in it. I feel that with Daisuke’s flexible thinking and network, such a vision could become reality. I look forward to your support in helping us share Nishikigoi with the world.

Ryuki Narita
President, Narita Koi Farm Co., Ltd.

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Mr. Ryuki Narita, congratulations on winning the Grand Champion title at the 54th All Japan Combined Nishikigoi Show. Through this interview, I felt strongly that this brilliant honor is the crystallization of the boundless love and relentless daily effort that Narita Koi Farm has devoted to Nishikigoi over so many years. I would like to once again express my deep respect for President Narita’s efforts to share the magnificent beauty of Nishikigoi with the world and to bring new energy into the industry. The fact that such achievements have drawn attention from around the globe is truly a landmark moment for the industry. I sincerely wish for the continued growth of Narita Koi Farm and for the further flourishing of Nishikigoi culture.

“My Philosophy” Editor-in-Chief, DK Sugiyama

54th All Japan Combined Nishikigoi Show 2024 NISHIKIGOI of the WORLD
The Grand Champion

Section 95 Kohaku
Alexander Romashchenko, Russia

Dealer: Narita Koi Farm Co., Ltd.
Breeder: Sakai Fish Farm Co., Ltd.
Agent: Nakamori Trading Co., Ltd.

Interview conducted at Narita Koi Farm Co., Ltd.
Interview & Editing: DK Sugiyama
Text: Naomi Kusuda
Production: “My Philosophy^®” Editorial Team