Alright Eric, now I pulled up for you
a Doitsu Showa from Shinoda. Shinoda is
one of my good friends in Japan. He breeds specifically
Doitsu or scaleless Koi. Thats all he does, and in all verieties, Kohaku,
Sanke. Kohaku and Showa he also does a
beautiful Hiozuri he has like the biggest Hiozuri I've ever seen, It's awesome.
Nice, okay so let's talk about
so this one's a scaleless we've already kind of talk about scaleless in one of our last
discussions. Yeah absolutely. Looks like
art man, it just looks like it's painted right on there.
In traditional Japanese
writing of haiku's there's often that Inc drawing
that sumi Inc, and to me this looks just like that.
In fact if you look at these patterns this look like it Egret or
crane. Oh no way! Perched up on
the side there. This is really ironic. Yeah.
Well and that could be like the red looks like
the Sun setting and then above its this bright white cloud, I mean just the imagery
you get when you look at these.
Yeah, that just blew my mind right now, there's a
freaking crane right on his back. Right. Yeah, that's awesome.
And that's what's really neat about this too and when you get into these
kinda fish you see
all those different you know things, like in their foreheads
patterns, I love the facial pattern on this one's really outstanding.
Absolutely, and it still has a lot of those fundamentals like that motoguro
and in just this beautiful head pattern
So help us understand, this is a black fish when it starts.
Right. You know it's different in the development of the color because
their scaleless, so give us more of an explanation
what we can expect on Doitsu Showa when
in far as what we can expect as it develops over the years.
Sure sure. Much like all Showa
we're gonna start off sort of a Kohaku base
right, a red and white base, and then as the years progress
that black's gonna come up thicker and thicker every year.
Doitsu Showa can be really difficult because we don't see the underlying
Thats what I'm saying, I don't see any spots where I can anticipate.
Correct, yeah, you got it. It's not there.
If you look really closely you can see a little bit of bluish color.
okay, right here and
so right now it's that sort of squiggly line of black
that might end up being more of a block pattern, it almost touched the red maybe
yeah exactly, yeah we really liked to have that
black touching white and red at the same time in one pattern.
I mean this fish is outstanding.
It looks like an art piece. I can't get over the heron on there it's
blowing my mind. Give us an idea, I wanna talk about cost on this fish.
Sure. When someone sees that, did you just notice that
when you were in Japan collecting fish did the breeder say
"Did you notice the Heron." No not at all, this is actually something
I noticed when I got her home.
This was the two-year-old, this is a two year old Koi from Shinoda
This fish has a lot of potential
in growth in size, its got a good bodyline
But when I picked it out, I had no idea
of this awesome awesome crane, I picked it based on its
head pattern and its body shape and the quality how good the white is and how
good the red is.
This is a $2500 Koi. She's gorges
Yes she is. Worth every penny. I wanna touch on one other thing
before we move to the next fish, you touched on
is it shoda. Shinoda. Shinoda
he just breeds specific fish. Absolutly.
I'm breeding all these fish to make money. He is like I'm gonna make the best Showa or
And he's known, and that's, his goal
is to be the guy who makes Doitsu Showa, he wants to be the guy who makes
Hi Utsuri's
And so you have, on this mountain you have
literally right now 80, 85 different breeders.
Some these are huge quote-on quote factories,
some of these are a one-man show, and
they all have their specialties are special artisans.
I love that, alright lets go to the next one, I hate to leave this one but.
I know, I know. you gonna love this next one. So,
this is a Showa, but if you notice it has
very, very, I guess sparkly scales
and we call that "Gin-Rin", gin-rin
literally translates to "Silver Scales." OK. And
it really really really brings out the white, I think it makes a white
just a pure snow, and really draws your eye
to the Koi. Yeah it's quite beautiful I'm
you know its kinda overcast today but on a sunny day that just,
just pops. Yeah it's one of the first fish you see in the pond. Yeah
It's a great fish. You can see this edging
on each individual scale it's very very reflective and bright,
so when the Sun hits that, and your going out to your Koi pond that's the first Koi
you're gonna see, because she's
literally beaming at you.
This Showa is also a very traditional Showa, but it's still developing
and still has maybe two or three years
of developing to do, and so this sumi(black) is unfinished
here and here, it's gonna eventually come out
and be real deep dark black and we have no idea what's going to happen on the
face, but I guarantee
its gonna be an interesting sumi pattern.
What we wanna talk about in Showa, it's very very
traditional to have that big black band go below the lateral line.
That's one of the main things that separates Showa from Sanke. Right.
Sanke has that tortoiseshell we talked about
only on the top end. Right. above lateral line. Exactly
So you always gonna have that deep band come
all the way around, like all the way through there stomach typically. Right.
So sometimes there's still white on the bottom right.
There is still white on the bottom where the band drops below lateral line.
Perfect. Yeah. Really cool, pectoral fins on this one
Yeah, it really does, it's gonna be a large fish. This is bred by
Koda, Koda Koi Farm, and Koda has some of the largest Gin-Rin Showa
I've seen. Does he specialize in Gin-Rin. He actualy breeds
a lot different varieties, but his
most famous Koi right now are Gin-Rin Showa and Goshiki.
Okay I don't wanna veer to far from Showa cause it's a huge topic, and there is
allot to talk about, but tell us how
Gin-Rin came to, this the first time that we brought Gin-Rin into our discussions
Alright right. How did they find that, was it an accident one day
yeah, there's allot of different stories
whether their true or not I'm not exactly sure,
but we do know that Gin-Rin started down south, and where mostly we see Gin-Rin
or we see development happening in Koi up north in Nigata
this actually came from the Hiroshima area. Okay.
And if you look at the time line, it was fairly shortly after
America dropped a bomb on Hiroshima and so a lot of people believe that
this Gin-Rin came from... Wow, interesting.
but whether that's true or not I really don't know.
So then Hiroshima, it was down there and then
Nigata probably came down, what what, yeah exactly,
by that time there's allot of communication happening and
the guy has this this beautiful fish with this sort of silver etchings
growing on the scales and he went oh what is this, I gotta have it.
That's a good description, silver etchings, because you say snowflake
and
silvery but... right... it looks like it's etged in there and that's what's
really quite amazing.
Absolutely. And I like how you can still see it, you know that Red's complete
on that, that upper part, but you can still see
the underlying etging, correct, and the parts that are unfinished its
more poppy, you know it's some great great, great stuff. Really does a good job
completing
this Koi. Alright,
to kinda wrap up our discussion on this Showa, this great fish
I wanna talk about the old-style Showa
and then there's new style Showa, so that shows historically what
the original breeders started doing, and then someone
decided they wanted to try and change it a little bit. Do something completely different with a Showa.
I think it's important to throw to fish in there old style,
old school new school. Yeah, lets do it right now, sounds good, let me put this one away
I hope you're enjoying all this information we're learning about Showa
join us in the last video as we finish the discussion