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01 / 09Kohaku
Red on white
The oldest of the ornamental varieties, and the one every keeper is told to begin and end with. Two colours, no third to hide behind: a mark that sits badly on a Kohaku sits badly in front of everybody.
On the page. The house design. Letterhead on the left, a serif title and the facts on the right, one wash of accent off the corner and a hairline closing the head. Two things on a white page, placed well.
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02 / 09Sumi
The ink itself
Sumi is the black in a koi and the black in a brush painting, the pigment a whole art was built to use sparingly. What is left unpainted is what makes the stroke read.
On the page. The most restrained of the nine. One hairline of accent along the very top of the sheet, no rules under the letterhead, a table with no lines in it at all and air where the ruling would have been.
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03 / 09Asagi
A blue net, laid straight
Pale indigo scales in a regular net down the back, red rising along the flanks. The oldest variety of all and the ancestor of every other one. Its beauty is the evenness of the net rather than any single scale.
On the page. The regular one. The title centred between two rules, the parties standing in two columns beneath it, and a table that holds its order without drawing a single line to do it.
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04 / 09Ogon
One metal, nose to tail
A single unbroken colour with no pattern anywhere on it. Ogon means gold. A fish with nothing to read is a fish that has to be faultless, which is why a plain one is judged harder than a patterned one.
On the page. The loudest. A full-bleed band of accent across the head carrying the title, alternate rows washed in the same colour, and the grand total reversed out of a block of it.
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05 / 09Tancho
One red circle, centred
A white fish carrying a single red crown, named for the crane that wears the same mark. The circle has to be round, centred and alone. Everything the variety is rests on one placed thing.
On the page. The formal one. The title and the document’s facts inside a ruled box with the letterhead beside it, and the largest title of the nine sitting in it. One block, deliberately placed.
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06 / 09Utsuri
Black answering a second colour
Blocks of black wrapping a second colour, or the other way about, alternating down the length of the body. Utsuri means reflection: the pattern is read as one colour answering the other rather than as marks on a ground.
On the page. The technical one. The letterhead in a narrow left column divided from the title by a rule, and a table ruled across and down, like a page out of an account book.
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07 / 09Shusui
One row of scales, down the spine
A scaleless fish with a single line of large scales running the length of the back and bare skin either side of it. The line down the middle is the entire variety.
On the page. The centred one. Letterhead, title and facts all down the middle of the page, closed by a pair of rules rather than one. A certificate rather than a bill.
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08 / 09Goshiki
Five colours in one fish
White, red, black and two blues layered over one another, so the pattern reads differently as the fish turns and the light on the water changes. Goshiki means five colours.
On the page. The layered one. The title reversed out of a tab in the top corner, the parties in two columns, and every figure at the foot gathered onto a panel of its own instead of the total alone.
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09 / 09Chagoi
Tea brown, and no pattern
The plainest fish in the pond and the friendliest: the first to feed from a hand, the fastest to grow, and the one whose calm makes the rest of the pond brave. Plainness is what it is for.
On the page. The plain one. The whole letterhead sitting on a single panel washed in the accent, the table boxed beneath it, and no colour anywhere else on the sheet.
