Kaneko Koi Farm

Kaneko Koi Farm is the Kujaku farm. Takaaki Kaneko started it in 1961 in Nigorisawa, Nagaoka, Niigata, and the farm is credited as one of the first to take the new Kujaku cross, which came out of Toshio Hirasawa's Maruju farm in the early 1960s, and fix it into a variety you could breed on purpose. Sixty years on, Kujaku is still the reason to buy Kaneko. ChampKoi imports koi from Kaneko.

His son Yasuaki Kaneko runs it now. The farm works about 30,000 square metres with 55 mud ponds and roughly 60 parent fish, and produces on the order of 30,000 koi a year. Small by Niigata standards, which suits a farm built on one specialty.

A good Kaneko Kujaku has a bright, even metallic base, sharp reticulation over the whole back and an orange-red pattern that stays put as the fish grows. Shiro Utsuri is the second line and a serious one. They also breed Matsukawabake, Ginrin Matsukawabake, Goshiki, Ochiba and Kikokuryu, and Kaneko-bred Tancho took their size classes at both the 2025 and 2026 All Japan Nishikigoi Shows.

One oddity worth knowing: Kaneko also breeds Tamasaba, the Niigata single-tailed goldfish with a Kohaku pattern, and selects them the way a koi farm would. If you want a Tamasaba with real pattern, this is where they come from. What Kaneko is not: a Gosanke farm. Go elsewhere for Kohaku, Sanke and Showa.