| Way, way back, Dick tutored me on culling for showa and utsuri. The first thing was to throw out all the white babies. I did that, but found that the return was very slim when raising black babies as most were found to be magoi at second culling (at least form the spawn I was working with at the time).
Then later, Brady said the "new showa" are from white babies. This would seem to make them sanke, by definition, but Brady convinced me that a koi benched as a showa is a showa, regardless of what color it was at birth. Hence, the possibility of seeing hi under the skin. In a sanke spawn last season I found a showa which was better than any I was able to produce in the black baby exercise.
This would seem to imply that the criteria for selecting showa tosai originating from white babies would be very different from the criteria for selecting tosai showa from black babies. Is this true? Doesn't the former have sumi which is developing while the later have sumi which is disappearing?
If you will entertain an off-topic question here, is there also a "new utsuri" originating from white babies? Finally, are there any long-term implications of abandoning a fundamental difference between showa and sanke, or usturi and bekko?
-steve hopkins |