Breeder info Feb 08 - Peter Waddington
(copyright Peter Waddington/Tategoi-koi Feb 2008)
Probably my most personal favourite Koi breeder in the world, over many years, Masaru Saito, owner of Shintaro Koi farm, has been a living legend to me, and has taught me so much, - I consider him to be a living GENIUS in the BIG, wide world of Nishikigoi, Masaru’s home is in Mushigame village, right in the heart of Yamakoshi.
Masaru breeds only Kohaku, Sanke and Showa varieties, whilst his father (SHOUSUKE), before him, bred only metallic varieties such a Yamatonishiki and Kikusui but that all ended many years ago.
Today Shousuke still assists Masaru in his daily work as well as caring for his own fresh vegetables planted and grown, in little pockets, and all around, the Yamakoshi mountainsides – he has a small private car he still owns and is still very agile – even for his advancing years.
As to Masaru himself, he has a most wonderful family, his wife Hiromi who was raised in Kitayama (the next village to Mushigame, - if you are travelling towards Takezawa from Mushigame) and they have two young boys named Kosuke and Kensuke.
Masaru first trained with his father Shousuke, and next trained at the Konishi farm in Hiroshima before completing his final apprenticeship with Toshio Sakai in Isawa.
As to the Nishikigoi that the Shintaro Koi farm own, it is quite a thriving business. Some years ago, a customer of mine who lived in Belgium asked Masaru Saito to select his VERY best TEN tosai Sanke ( 1 Year Old Koi) for him to grow in his very best mud pond for the entire summer growing season and he would return to view them in the following autumn but would pay for them there and now.
We arranged all these details and the 10 VERY BEST TOSAI which Saito San selected cost my customer 3,000,000 yen – around £15,000.00 pounds or around $30,000.00 at that time.
As promised, Saito San placed the 10 tosai into one single small mud pond and added ONE other in case that one of the others had died throughout the summer growing season!
In autumn, I rang my customer from Belgium – his name was Ed Aremia who was looking forward to his 10 Koi being harvested from his ‘PRIVATE AND SELECT’ mud pond in Yamakoshi, Japan.
On the night BEFORE the Koi were to be harvested, Ed’s close friend, Tom Lansing, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona was speaking with us at the bar, he also mentioned as to how many Koi would turn out to be male or female to Ed – male Koi are far less valuable than females – as a result, Ed went into an immediate ‘panic attack’ because he did not know what the outcome would eventually be!
The next afternoon we harvested the small mud pond and all 11 Koi were fine – none had been lost. It turned out that after inspecting them, that there were 6 females and 4 males – the remaining one from the 11 went back into Shintaro’s own stock.
Later, the next day, we were looking at the Koi at Igarashi Kazuto’s outlet when Ed begged me to take him back to Shintaro’s farm. He was worried about the 4 males he had bought and begged Masaru to change his 10 nissai for some larger female Koi.
We explained the problem to Mr. Saito who said we he had ‘no problem at all’ in exchanging the 10 nissai for four Yonsai (4 year old Koi) and would be happy to do so, and Ed was as happy as a young lad! Later that year, Masao Kato came around to Shintaro Koi farm and bought JUST ONE of the 10 nissai, which Ed had bought and rejected, for 5,000,000yen (around £15,000 or $30,000) which went on to take numerous top-of –the-league awards in important Nishikigoi Shows throughout Japan!
Without a doubt, you have to take a long and hard study at Shintaro’s stocks before you decide if they are just insipid or absolutely fantastic – just always remember that!
If you wish to visit Shintaro and get lost just get to Mushigame villiage and ask anyone for directions to Yamamatsu. Shintaro Koi is the very next house up the banking on the left side of the road. I can assure you that you will get a very warm welcome!
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