Buying at Sekiguchi – and Beyond

When we arrived in Japan, one of the first bookings we made for this trip was a visit to Sekiguchi. The earliest appointment available was on the Thursday. Buying days run from Monday to Friday, so it was quite a wait to get in – but we took it.

Today we made the long drive from Ojiya, where we’re staying, to Sekiguchi. Anticipation was high. Sekiguchi is my favourite Showa breeder in Niigata because of the combination of quality and the range of size, age and grade options that suit both our breeding programme and the shop. The sumi on his Showa also has an uncanny habit of developing in exactly the right places, more often than you’d expect.

Arrival at Sekiguchi

On this visit, I planned to focus on high-quality male koi for our Showa breeding programme.

When we arrived, we began with a viewing of the show pond, which usually includes both customer fish and broodstock. It wasn’t quite as full as I remembered from the last visit, but it was still an impressive sight – metre-long Showa, some even larger, and all of exceptional quality.

Woody from Koi In The Uk captured some great footage Sekiguchi's show pond.  Watch his vlog from day 5 to see it - link further down this blog post.

To give you a benchmark: imagine a typical UK koi show Grand Champion at one of the large national events. A koi like that would sit there nicely, yes, but it would be surrounded by generally much larger koi of equal or higher quality. 

The Art of Balance

When you look at the koi in a pond like that, the patterns are finished and breathtaking. But if you look at each colour making up that pattern separately – and consider how it might have looked as a tosai, before the sumi had developed – many would have appeared extremely unbalanced. Looking only at the red and white, some would have seemed uneven. Yet the sumi develops perfectly to balance the pattern. That’s one attribute I’ve consistently noticed with Sekiguchi Showa: they tend to develop sumi in exactly the right places, far more often than chance would suggest.

What you see in this pond, and the equivalent ponds at other top breeders, are the absolute pinnacle of their work – the cream, the very rarest koi produced over many years of spawnings. They represent the breaking of glass ceilings in koi breeding, pushing the boundaries of what’s possible further each year. These koi are the reference point for excellence – but they are also, for all practical purposes, unattainable to anyone but the super-rich. Their value isn’t just financial; they embody the breeder’s progress, experience, and the refinement of a bloodline that’s taken decades to perfect.

However, that’s one of the beautiful dynamics within the koi industry: these cutting-edge qualities don’t stay confined to the show pond forever. Over time, as lines strengthen and traits become more consistent, those same genetic improvements filter down into the wider spawnings. What begins as extraordinary and rare gradually becomes more common in later generations.

That means, in the long run, the innovations seen in those elite Showa eventually make their way into more affordable koi – like the Sekiguchi tosai we currently offer at 20–28 cm. Buying tosai allows hobbyists to experience and experiment with the very same bloodlines that produce the world’s most exceptional koi, but at a level that’s accessible to many more people.

Buying Nisai, however, is a different ball game – and that was the main focus of this trip. The goal wasn’t simply to admire what’s possible, but to secure some of the finest Nisai that Sekiguchi had available: fish that bridge the gap between the elite show specimens and the more accessible young koi. These are the koi where the potential you see in the show pond begins to take shape – where the genetics and breeder’s skill start to reveal themselves in full form.

To make the most of that opportunity, I also needed to be prepared on the financial side. Quality at this level doesn’t come cheaply, and to secure the right koi I had to dig deeper into our buying budget than originally planned. That’s always part of the balance when buying in Japan – knowing when to stretch to secure something exceptional, and when to hold back. With the quality in front of me that day, and the ponds Sekiguchi had prepared, it was clear this was a moment worth committing to.

On My Buying Day at Sekiguchi

The buying area at Sekiguchi was set up with three ponds of Nisai Showa: one pond of high-quality males, one of high-quality females, and one mixed-sex pond. The females were individually priced, while the males were available at a fixed price for picking – a format that makes it easier to build confidence and move decisively.

I’ve been steadily developing our Showa breeding programme for the past two and a half years, and many of the koi we started with are now Yonsai. That means the breeding process should be more predictable and productive than when we first acquired them as Nisai. A few more top-quality males from Sekiguchi would strengthen that foundation significantly.

With that in mind, I began selecting. I picked around half a dozen – perhaps a few more – bowled them up, and started to narrow the choices. My strategy was to identify koi that each demonstrated one attribute better than the rest of the pond: one chosen for body shape, one for fukurin and overall skin quality, and one chosen by Sekiguchi himself for balance and overall Showa quality.

Every koi in that pond was outstanding. Even the one selected primarily for body still possessed beautiful skin, pattern and sumi. The standard was remarkable, and making final selections among koi of this calibre is always a challenge – but also one of the most rewarding parts of the job.

Here’s a video of all three males – see if you can work out which one was Sekiguchi’s choice. I’ll reveal the answer at the end of this blog.

 

For my breeding programme, I’m keen to see whether prioritising individual attributes in our parent fish delivers noticeable benefits in the quality of our offspring.

 

Selecting the Female

With three large males chosen, I had space left in the box for one female. This koi needed to fulfil two roles: it had to be suitable for offering to a customer and also suitable as a breeding female for us.

It took longer to pick this one koi than it did to choose the three males. I bowled several of these high-quality females, and each was stunning to see up close – especially with Sekiguchi there to discuss them. They were all individually priced, meaning you bowl the koi and the breeder sets the price. That dynamic probably added to the challenge, since I needed to satisfy multiple objectives and gauge how Sekiguchi was pricing each koi.

In the end, I chose a female with exceptional fukurin.

The photo could be clearer, but you can see the 3D texture created by the fukurin here.

If you read my blogs regularly, you’ll know how much I value this feature. High-quality fukurin is rare, but at Sekiguchi, all the broodstock and customer koi in the show pond display incredible examples of it.

On my last trip in February 2025, I purchased a male and female Showa from Marujyu for breeding, with his guidance. Both were outstanding for their fukurin. The female, although one of the smaller Nisai at around 45–50 cm, had fukurin of remarkable quality.

So I followed that same model at Sekiguchi: I selected one of the smaller Nisai from a pond of large fish, prioritising the best fukurin I could find, even if that meant compromising slightly in other areas. That’s how I made my final choice.

Expanding Focus – Kohaku and Beyond

This autumn, as we extend our buying to include koi of very high quality for the shop, our main focus has been Kohaku. You’ll soon see a superb range available from us, including females from Torazo and Marujyu, and a great selection from Hoshikin and Tanaka.

Leaving Sekiguchi this time, I left with the idea that on a future trip we should return earlier in the week to make Sekiguchi’s higher-quality Go-Sanke a key buying focus. Timing is crucial when buying koi in Japan – stock varies week by week, sometimes even within the same week. Coordinating breeder availability with our own buying priorities is a challenge that often requires imperfect but well-judged solutions. The goal, of course, is always to achieve the right result for both our customers and ourselves.

That’s why I start each buying week with a long list of objectives and aim to achieve a good proportion of them, while staying flexible enough to shift focus – and funds – quickly when necessary. Careful preparation before each trip means those rapid decisions can still be informed ones.

Visiting Satoshi, Kobayashi, and Maruhiro

Our next stop was Satoshi. He had some wonderful Nisai, but in varieties outside our current focus, so we passed this time. At Kobayashi, I was hoping for Shiro Utsuri and Aragoke, but couldn’t find the right balance of price and quality – the same challenge I’d encountered a few days earlier at Shinoda.

Sekiguchi, Satoshi and Kobayashi are all in a similar area, so after visiting them we travelled towards Maruhiro for a look at his individually priced ponds, focusing on Showa and Shiro Utsuri.

On the way, we bumped into Yamaju and took a quick diversion to visit him too. Many of you love our Doitsu Ochiba breeding line – our breeding females for that line come from Yamaju, purchased as high-quality Sansai some years ago. It was brilliant to see what he’s producing now. There were plenty of interesting koi, but again the price-to-quality balance wasn’t quite right for us this trip.

We reached Maruhiro mid-afternoon on Thursday, as planned, and spent time making our selections with his help. Afterwards, we took in the view of his famous circular feature pond – a sight known to anyone who follows koi videos on YouTube. It’s one of those places that never fails to impress, no matter how often you visit.

Reflection at Maruhiro

This time, the pond seemed particularly striking. Maruhiro appears to raise the bar every year. Having just visited other breeders specialising in single varieties such as Showa, Aka Matsuba, Ki Utsuri and Doitsu metallics, it hit home how remarkable it is for one farm to produce koi of such stature across such a wide range of varieties.

The workload alone is immense, not to mention the risks and investment involved in breeding koi commercially. I don’t feel a strong urge to buy from that famous pond – I see it more as Maruhiro’s way of communicating what he stands for: brilliant koi across an exceptional variety range.

I can empathise with that. While we can’t breed as many varieties or take them all to such a high level, by combining koi from our own breeding programme with top-quality fish from Japan, we can also offer a comprehensive range for hobbyists to enjoy.

After completing our work, we had a little spare time but not enough to visit another breeder, so we rewarded ourselves for a successful week by sitting on the bench beside the circular show pond, taking in the view. It was a fitting end to an inspiring day.

 

🎥 Watch the Day 5 Vlog – Sekiguchi & Maruhiro

See the day in action in our latest vlog from Koi in the UK. Join us in Niigata as we visit Sekiguchi and Maruhiro, view some of the region’s finest Showa and Go-Sanke, and make key selections for our breeding and shop programmes.

You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the koi we bowled, the buying process, and some of the incredible ponds we visited during one of the most memorable days of the trip.

👉 Watch the Day 5 vlog here: https://youtu.be/PPzqsJn_3io?si=LMBc50MX-dIwsgop

The Answer

Here’s the koi, from our trio of high-quality male Nisai, that was Sekiguchi’s choice.

Give yourself full marks if you got this right!

It was interesting to see Sekiguchi pick this one.  A more tubular shaped body, with volume through the full length of the koi but without the extra height and thickness around the first third of the body. 

He explained that this koi would end up with the best pattern once the sumi had fully developed.  He went on to say, that whilst this koi wasn't the best in any one trait compared to the other koi in the pond, he felt it was good in all areas, had no weaknesses, and the best compromise overall.

The beni is worth a bit of a deeper focus, as I thought the beni is particularly good on this one.  Here are some close ups, showing the exquisite kiwa, which is the trailing edge of the pattern - most commonly described relating to beni, and it's really good on the beni pattern here.  But also check out the kiwa, ie the trailing edge of the sumi pattern sitting at the bottom of the picture below - as that kiwa is also excellent.

 

Thos qualities also seen with consistency on the other beni pattern markings.