About Jos Aben

After having written many articles in various leading magazines about Koi, Jos Aben has written a book and has published a lot of information on several websites about the different koi varieties. His years of experience in the Koi world enabled him to do this.

Jos Aben is now one of the longest-serving owners of the same Koi farm in Europe. His farm, A & C Koi has been in existence for more than 30 years.

Before Jos caught the Koi bug he performed various different activities. He was, amongst others, an advertising designer, art restorer, musician and composer. As a composer he travelled the world. On one of his trips abroad, he was presented with a gift of Koi, due to a lack of knowhow, they almost immediately died at home in his pond. After a second attempt to keep more Koi alive they also died. Jos was trying to figure out what was the cause of this. The latter characterizes the type of person Jos is, because he did not rest until he knew everything there was to know about Koi at that point in time.

A few years later he started his landscaping business and not long after that he began to import Koi from Japan. After a period of importing Koi from Japan, Jos began experimenting with breeding Koi at home. 21 years ago Jos was the first person in the Netherlands who gave Koi related seminars.

After experimenting for five years he found his own breeding good enough to sell. For years, the battle was waged against the public opinion that good Koi only originate from Japan. Given the increasing recognition in the world for Yoshikigoi and his breeding methods, Yoshikigoi are now on the same quality level as Koi from Japan.

Yoshikigoi has different breeding locations in the Netherlands and Poland. In total, Jos and his business partner Ernst Driessen own over 60 acres of land. This huge amount of land consists mainly of mud ponds for storage and growth of the bred koi.