Page 349 - Encyclopedia of Aquarium and Pond Fish, 3rd Edition

KOI 347

THE ORIGINS OF KOI
Today’s modern koi varieties are descendants a number were then transferred to the moat
of black carp, known as Magoi, which were surrounding the Emperor’s Imperial Palace.
introduced to Japan from China around 1000 Their descendants can still be found there
CE. By the 1600s, these plain-looking fish were today. Koi-keeping and breeding subsequently
thriving in the waterways around the paddy became extremely popular in Japan, signaling
fields of Niigata prefecture on Honshu Island, the birth of the lucrative Japanese koi industry
and the local rice farmers caught them for of today.
food. Around the early 1800s, individual fish Koi were first introduced to the US in
displaying patches of color and patterning on the early 1940s. It took longer for them to
their bodies started to appear, and some of gain recognition in Europe; koi were not
the farmers began to selectively breed for seen in Great Britain until the 1960s. Since
these characteristics. Known as “Nishikigoi,” or then, they have gained a huge international
“brocaded carp,” these colorful fish attained following and are now bred not only in Japan
public recognition when a group was shown but in other countries, including the US, Israel,
at the 1914 Taisho Exhibition in Tokyo, and China, Korea, Thailand, and South Africa.

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