Koi story: Priceless Japanese fish make a splash

KAZO, Japan: Hand-reared for their color and beauty, koi carp have become an iconic symbol of Japan that can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and even

The nation’s koi carp were brought to the world’s attention when visiting US President Donald Trump was snapped unceremoniously dumping the last of a box of feed into a palace pond in Tokyo.

been popular in Japan, where top breeders take their most prized specimens ( known as “

to highly competitive “beauty parades.”

At one such competition in Tokyo, judges in sharp suits, notebooks in hand, stride around tanks lined up along a pedestrian street where the valuable koi strut their stuff.

They come in all the colors of the rainbow: pearly white, bright red, cloudy- grey, dark blue, gleaming golden yellow.

But it is the curvature of the - petition organizer Isamu Hattori, who runs Japan’s main association for breeders of koi carp.

Color and contrast make up another 30 percent, he told AFP.

And the final 10 percent? “a concept that is tricky best translated as the “presence” or

‘Everything matters’

“’ It’s either there in the genes at birth, or it’s not,” mused Mikinori Kurikara, a koi breeder in Saitama, north of Tokyo, who says eight or nine months old.

“Put it this way, it’s like looking after your own children every day. You care for your kids and want them to grow healthy. In the same way, you take adore them,” he told AFP.

At his farm, thousands of tiny “nishikigoi” (colored carp) dart around meticulously divided by age and color.

A less glorious fate awaits the other koi who have not been fortunate enough to catch the eye of the breeder: they are sold off as

“It’s a really delicate job, re ground, the water quality, the food,” explained the 48-year-old, who took over the farm from his father and is training his son, half his age, in the subtle arts of koi breeding.

“We have many secrets,” he adds mischievously. “But even if we let them slip, it wouldn’t work. You have to be able to feel it.”

‘Social ladder’

These days, any self- respecting traditional Japanese garden has plenty of colorful koi gracing its ponds, but it is a relatively