Odakan Koi Farm

Odakan is not a Niigata family farm. It is a koi company that Shuichi Yoshida founded in 1993 as Odawara Kanshogyo in Kanagawa, incorporated as Odakan Corporation in 2000, and extended to Niigata with a greenhouse and office in Nagaoka in 2016. Most of what Odakan sells is selected from Niigata and Hiroshima breeders and grown on in its own ponds; a smaller share is bred in-house, mainly Gosanke. ChampKoi imports koi from Odakan.

Yoshida's background matters. He joined Sakai Fish Farm in Hiroshima at 23 and spent five years there before going out on his own, and Kentaro Sakai calls him the leading figure among Sakai alumni. That is the eye behind the selection. Odakan's annual Meiriten, a one-day select-koi show, brings out fish from twenty-odd top farms, and Odakan Niigata was one of the founding participants in the Japan Breeder Auction in 2023. Odakan is a member of the Zen Nippon Nishikigoi Shinkokai.

The Nagaoka facility opened in November 2016: a new greenhouse with a renovated old farmhouse as the office, set up partly for overseas buyers. It also boards fish. Koi bought in Japan are grown on and prepared for shows there, which is how an Odakan-prepared Kohaku ended up winning at the 2025 All Japan Young Koi Show.

What to expect from an Odakan-labelled koi: a fish chosen by a dealer with a breeder's training rather than a fish from one bloodline. Ask which farm bred it. If it is Odakan's own spawn it will be Kohaku, Sanke or Showa; if it came from another farm, the breeder name tells you more than the Odakan name does.