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Dr. Kyo Koike was born on February 11, 1878, in the Shimane Prefecture of Japan. He came from a long line of doctors in his family, and soon followed in their footsteps, graduating from medical school and starting his medical practice in Japan before immigrating to the United States. He arrived in Seattle on December 19, 1916, and soon settled into his adopted city. Dr. Koike opened his medical and surgical practice in Seattle's Nihonmachi (Japantown), while continuing to pursue his love of photography, in particular the style known as Pictorialism.

In 1924 Dr. Koike and a group of other photographers founded the Seattle Camera Club as a means of connecting immigrant Japanese and American Pictorialist photographers through club activities, exhibitions, etc. He was one of the editors of the club's journal Notan, which was published in both English and Japanese. Unfortunately the club disbanded in 1929 due to the financial pressures on members brought on by the Depression.

Koike's photography blended both Eastern and Western styles; he discussed his view of these styles in American Photography's January 1928 issue: "The Japanese idea of composition in pictures is somewhat different from that of Americans. You will frequently find a peculiar atmosphere in their pictures that is due, no doubt, to the influence of ancient Japanese literature and art. From the literary standpoint most Japanese poems contain but a very few words and instead of stating facts and explaining the whole story, such a poem leaves much to the imagination of the reader and you will find a similar tendency in the pictorial art of Japan".

Dr. Koike was the most successful of the Seattle Camera Club members; he won many awards and his photographs were exhibited in the salons of Europe, Japan, the United States, and South America. By 1929, he was the most exhibited Pictorial photographer in the world and had articles about photography published in national magazines, including Photo-Era and Camera-Craft . The Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain also honored Dr. Koike and his work with a membership, making him the only Japanese member at that time. He was also a distinguished haiku poet, and in 1934 became a prominent member of the Rainier Ginsha, a Seattle haiku poetry society founded by poet Kyou Kawajiri that same year. He would later edit a collection of poetry published by the Rainier Ginsha in 1938.

Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on December 9, 1941, Dr. Koike turned in his camera in to the Seattle Police Department to be in compliance with a federal order for "enemy aliens" to turn in their cameras and radios because they could potentially be used for spying. Koike's close friend and fellow photographer, Iwao Matsushita, had been arrested by the FBI on December 7 as a "dangerous alien" and sent to Fort Missoula in Montana. Matsushita's wife, Hanaye, was evacuated to Camp Harmony in Puyallup, Washington, and Koike (although he was not required to go to internment at that time) volunteered to go along with her. They were both eventually placed in the Minidoka War Relocation Center in southern Idaho, where Koike remained until August 1945. He returned to Seattle and re-opened his medical practice where he worked until he died while picking ferns on Mt. Rainier at the age of 70 on March 31, 1947.