.jpg/960px-Koi_in_a_fish_pond_-_Frank_Green_2015_(Unsplash).jpg)
Where does Koi (ornamental carp) come from?
Koi come from the snowy mountain villages of Niigata, Japan. In the early 1800s, farmers around Yamakoshi and Ojiya who raised carp for food began breeding the odd coloured ones, and the brocaded fish they created now swim in garden ponds around the world.
Winter food in snowbound villages
The area was called Nijūmuragō, 'twenty villages'. Heavy snow cut it off for months, so farmers kept black carp as a winter source of protein, in ponds near their terraced rice fields and, in winter, in ponds by their farmhouses. In the Bunka and Bunsei eras (1804–1830) they bred red and white carp as well as black ones, and crossed them to produce red-and-white fish. Systematic breeding of ornamental carp had begun there by the 1820s.
A silver medal in Tokyo
Around 1875 coloured koi became popular and some fetched high prices. Niigata Prefecture briefly banned their breeding as a speculative business, but lifted the ban after the villagers petitioned. In 1914 breeders from Higashiyama and Takezawa showed their fish at the Tokyo Taishō Exposition in Ueno Park. Described as the first of their kind seen around Tokyo, they won a silver medal. The show opened new markets, and the price of koi soared.
Why people say China
Carp were first domesticated in China, where Amur carp were farmed for food at least as long ago as the 5th century BCE, and a 4th-century Chinese book already describes red, blue, black, white and yellow carp. Those single-coloured fish are thought to have been chance mutations, not breeds. The patterned breeds were created in Niigata: Kōhaku and Taishō Sanshoku were fixed as breeds in 1917, and Shōwa Sanshoku in 1927.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · nippon.com ↗
.jpg/330px-%22Ewe_lookin_at_me_kid........%22%3F_(51396500853).jpg)
.jpg/330px-Three_graceful_horses_(Unsplash).jpg)
