Japan’s koi carp-e-diem

Japan’s koi carp caught 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.
Japan’s koi carp-e-diem

Japan’s koi carp caught 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. Hand-reared for their colour and beauty, the fish have become an iconic symbol that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars and even participate in fish beauty contests.

Fish beauty parades
Koi carp have been popular in Japan for decades. Top breeders of the fish take their prized specimens (known as “nishikigoi”) to highly competitive “beauty parades.” At one such competition in Tokyo, judges in sharp suits, notebooks in hand, stride around tanks lining a pedestrian street where the koi strut their stuff. They come in the colours of a rainbow: pearly white, bright red, cloud grey, dark blue, gleaming golden yellow.

Curves, colours and X factor
However, it’s not just the colour but also the fish’s curvature that gets judged. Competition organiser Isamu Hattori said 60 per cent of the score is reserved for the curves. Colour make up 30 per cent.

And the final 10 per cent? “Hinkaku” — a concept that is tricky to define and even harder to judge, best translated as the “presence” or “aura” of the fish. It’s either there in the genes at birth, or it’s not,” mused Mikinori Kurikara, a koi breeder in Saitama, north of Tokyo.

The story behind the Koi craze
Around 200 years ago, villagers in the mountainous region around Niigata (in the north-west of Japan) started to practise genetic engineering without knowing what they were doing. They began to cross-breed rare colourful carp, not for food but for pure aesthetical value. The craze for nishikigoi gradually took over the whole of Japan and then spread to other parts of Asia, especially China.

Booming business
Today, koi is a highly profitable business and Japanese exports are booming — 90 per cent of production is exported and sold at auctions. In 2016, Japan exported a record 295 tonnes of koi carp, generating a turnover of $31 million, an increase of almost 50 per cent from 2007, according to Japan’s agriculture ministry.

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The New Indian Express
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