Shiro: White is Bad, White is Good

[JasPR]

well , certainly you're right Ray- it is about exposure and repetative exposure to quality that ultimately trains the eye. But I hope you can agree with me than the old way of judging ( praising every fish to the moon to encourage the beginner might not be the best way to learn?). What I think would be more helpful, on this subject of shiro, as well as a host of others, is to show the beginner student what isn't good or what isn't quality.

In regards to white, that we show what hard white IS as it is so common in our male show fish, goromo etc, here in America. And as you pointed out, we are not blessed with dozens and dozens of great fish in America. So the inverse should be taught, as it was intended by the original concept of a koi show. That is, explain why shiro is less than the ideal and why some fish are better than others and closer to the ideal.

This is about the best picture I have in digital of great white in a non-gosanke. It is real as the sunlight hides nothing. This 24 inch shiro was being offered at a special price of $8500. That is the price of perfection in body and shiro. Add the perfect pattern and I'm sure the price would double.

[JasPR]

I love this crummy picture!And I stick it in my power point presentations about color and quality. It is a favorite because, for me, it really captures in movement, the brightness but delicate nature of color on a quality koi. This is a pink beni base kohaku with exceptional body and super shiro skin. JR

[RayJordan]

Great comments about skin and some good photos to demonstrate as well. I would add that modern shiro utsuri are actually an off shoot of Modern Showa which has been heavily influenced by kohaku and sanke crossbreeding. So modern Shiro Utsuri could have some of the attributes of Showa skin as a result.

[Super Kindai]

JR. Thank you for the splendid Kohaku picture !! I love pink beni....it's hard to find like that.....really hard

My understanding about a good skin is something like a fine-granted skin = silky texture with luster. I don't know an exact reason but there IS a very simple rule.....Great skin quality = good beni & sumi and Poor skin quality = poor beni & sumi

[JasPR]

wow, nice one.

I have gotten pretty heavy into the physiological reasons for the great color on great skin. The Jitai of the quality fish is really the type of skin associated with the type of body that we know as high quality. And like red hair and blue eyes, these phenotypic traits tend to be found with one another. If we wanted to gamble on how many red haired , blue eyed people also had freckles, if we bet over 50% we would likely be right. Yet in the great human population of the world maybe less than 10% of people have freckles.
In the case of our koi, only a percentage will have great confirmation and great shiro skin. But of the ones that do, the color will also tend to be excellent.
The physiological reason for this is that 'great skin' is thick white translucent skin but if we look under a microscope we will find that the skin is divided into defined layers of epidermis, dermis and deep dermis. The epidermis is thin and the dermis in the best fish is very thick. Color grows in both the epidermal layer and the dermis layer, and tends to ' layer on' or build ( we call it finish) as the skin expands and the fish grows. This is why Hoshi is so important as an indicator in fish that at a young age show great bone structure and great creamy white skin. It implies that beni will continue to expand deeper as the dermis gets thicker and thicker with age. The image of this is layers of color being laid down like coats paint. But in truth it is color expansion with the expansion fo the skin layers that comes with age as well as the growth of scales creating two lateral spreading layers of both epidermis and dermis on either side of the scale surface.
These great koi also possess luminescent cells within the skin layers. This reflects light back and gives that silk like effect to the skin. And concenrations of the these cells and their byproducts eventually create fukurin in the layers of skin trapped between scales.
So when we look down at the skin of a great gosanke we are seeing into the skin layers and even below the scales , into the skin layers. The color there will begin in the lower dermis and rise right up to the epidermis layer's surface.
You can envision this by imagining looking at one of those frosted glass blocks that you see used in some bathroom designs as glas block walls/windows. The clear block layed on its side doesn't allow us to read the print on the newspaper it might be sitting on. But we could certainly see into it and notice say, a rose embedded in the frosted block. Hope you get what I'm saying? JR

[MikeM]

Excellent discussion.

...So, how about elaborating on the white of Shiro Utsuri compared to that of Kohaku?

[JasPR]

Mike, I'm chatting with Paladin right now about the difference between all ki and some hi utsuri and the new shiro utsuri. About ten years ago, the 'new' shiro utsuri was like the kindai showa. It had a new strange white porcelain skin and just slashes and spots of sumi . And it no longer seemed to have the tiger stripping or checkerboard pattern of the old shiro utsuri. It was very disappointing to American hobbyists at the time as the pattern was lacking in symmetry, and pattern is everything to the beginner then and the beginner now. But something wonderful was happening back then. The shiro was moving from a black based fish to a white based fish and the skin was changing. And so was the origin of the sumi. Instead of being a sumi emerging from the fascia and deep dermis, it was being 'recreated' the upper dermis and the epidermis in that thicker and more translucent gosanke skin.
Todays shiro has a blend of black based showa and classy gosanke. And the sumi is now shiny like modern showa. But unlike modern showa, the breeders seem to have been able to bring the pattern of utsuri back into the fish pretty quickly. It is very rare to see the 'full package' with a perfect checkerboard pattern like on the duller black based shiros, but they do exist. And American eyes have adjusted to the look of the pattern anyway. Sometimes they think 'not' but when they see a perfect checkerboard pattern but a dull sumi and some stray sumi on an off white fish and compare that to the white skin and deep brilliant sumi of a modern shiro, the lesson is instantly seared into the brain! Hey, come to think of it, isn't that what a koi shows supposed to do?! JR

[Super Kindai]

One of the best todays Shiro Uturi (All Japan 2007)

[JasPR]

seek and ye shall find! JR

[l113892]

Maybe half the desired package.