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Dr. was a Japanese-American poet, physician and photographer.

Photography

Koike arrived in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is a seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the seat of King County, Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in both the state of Washington and the Pacific Northwest regio ...

in 1916 at the age of 38, and established a medical clinic in the downtown area near Main Street and 5th Avenue. Although he was a respected professional surgeon, his first love was photography. He was a participant in the first

Frederick & Nelson Frederick & Nelson was a department store chain in the northwestern United States, based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1891 as a furniture store, it later expanded to sell other types of merchandise. The company was acquired by Marshall Fiel ...

art salon, noted for his

pictorialist Pictorialism is an international style and aesthetic movement that dominated photography during the later 19th and early 20th centuries. There is no standard definition of the term, but in general it refers to a style in which the photographer ha ...

style, and innovative combination of an Eastern and Western aesthetic. He was a member of the

Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, commonly known as the Royal Photographic Society (RPS), is one of the world's oldest photographic societies. It was founded in London, England, in 1853 as the Photographic Society of London with ...

, and was designated a Fellow in 1928. He was also Director of the Associated Camera Clubs of America. His solo exhibitions included the Kodak Park Camera Club, Rochester, NY, 1926, the Portage Camera Club, Akron, Ohio, 1927, the Brooklyn Institute of Arts & Sciences in 1928, and

The Art Institute of Seattle The Art Institute of Seattle was a for-profit art and culinary school in Seattle, Washington. The school was one of a number of Art Institutes, a franchise of for-profit art colleges with many branches in North America, owned and operated by Ed ...

in 1929. Koike was the originator of the Seattle Camera Club. Given his thriving practice in the Japanese community in Seattle, his professional income allowed him not only to concentrate on his photography but to underwrite many of the expenses of forming the club. He was the editor of the club's newsletter ''Notan''. He left all of his photographs and extensive records of the Seattle Camera Club to fellow club member Iwao Matsushita upon his death.

Poetry

Koike was also a noted poet, under the pen name . He was a member of the Rainier Ginsha, a Seattle Haiku poetry society formed in 1934 by poet Kyōu Kawajiri.

Internment during World War II

During

Internment of Japanese Americans Internment is the imprisonment of people, commonly in large groups, without charges or intent to file charges. The term is especially used for the confinement "of enemy citizens in wartime or of terrorism suspects". Thus, while it can simply ...

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

all of his photographic equipment was confiscated by the U.S. government, and he was taken to the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho. While being detained he formed a new poetry society called Minidoka Ginsha. By 1945, the group consisted of over 158 poets. Koike became ill in the camps and died in 1947, shortly after his release.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Koike, Kyo Pictorialists Portrait photographers American artists of Japanese descent American poets American poets of Asian descent American writers of Japanese descent People from Shimane Prefecture Japanese emigrants to the United States American physicians of Japanese descent Japanese-American internees 1878 births 1947 deaths