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Mike, the 'golden carp' were known to the Japanese as they inhabited the water around Nagasaki which was opened to the Portuguese for trading in the 1570s. From there it became a sort of quarantine area for the growing number of western traders that came over the next 75 years. It was there and at the artifical island of Dejima that reports of golden carp arose. It is suggested by one Japanese report that the Portuguese brought them to that area. It is not clear if they carried them with them, traded for them on in China or captured, concentrated and passively bred them in area water? It is tempting to conjecture that they brought them as there is a morph of the common carp in Eastern Europe and along the old Roman empire regions that is golden.
At any rate, Japanese later traveled there to collect stock for work on the early koi carp. I'll see if I can get you those references---- JR
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