Kawakami Koi Farm

Kawakami is the farm to buy from if you want Goshiki, Kumonryu or Shusui from Ojiya. Takashi Kawakami, fourth generation, runs it in Uragara, a short drive from Ojiya station, and the family has been in koi since his great-grandfather Jirosuke started as a wholesaler in the late 1920s.

For its first fifty years the business was mostly distribution. Jirosuke carried koi to Toyama and Gifu in food carriers, and the family later stocked fish from across Yamakoshi and shipped them to dealers nationwide. Full-scale breeding began in 1975 under Katsuyuki Kawakami, Takashi's father, and the farm has produced a wide spread of varieties ever since: about twenty, including Goshiki, Kumonryu, Beni Kumonryu, Asagi, Shusui, Shiro Utsuri, Kujaku, Koromo and several Doitsu forms.

Kawakami sells around 90 percent of its production overseas and was one of the first Ojiya farms to do so, so the fish are bred to look good young: clear pattern at tosai and nisai size rather than a gamble on later development. A Kawakami Goshiki has taken the Kokugyo Prize at the All Japan Nishikigoi Show, and the family credits careful everyday husbandry rather than prize-chasing. The 2004 Chuetsu earthquake took parent fish and field ponds; the farm rebuilt.

This is not where you go for Gosanke. ChampKoi imports koi from Kawakami; look for the Goshiki, Kumonryu and Shusui.