Source Notes
- Dennis Reed, Japanese Photography in America, 1920–1940, exhibit folder (New York: Whitney
Museum of American Art at Equitable Center, 1988), n.p.
- Letter from Mr. Edwin Franklin Dreher, Notan, April 12, 1929, p. 10.
- Frank R. Fraprie, “Our Illustrations,” in The American Annual of Photography (1928), 136.
- As Reed made hundreds of telephone calls to try to locate relatives of the photographers, he
often had to overcome suspicion about his motives or family ignorance that their relative had
ever been a photographer. Abby Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy: Japanese Photography
in America,” Museum of California Magazine (January–February 1988): 8.
- In discussing the work of the San Francisco Camera Club members, Dennis Reed says, “So
few prints exist that no general assessment of their work is possible.” Dennis Reed, Japanese
Photography in America, 1920–1940 (Los Angeles: Japanese American Cultural and Community
Center, 1985), 31.
- Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 4.
- This fear was even more widespread than just among the West Coast Japanese photographers.
Soichi Sunami, who exhibited with the Seattle Camera Club, burned a number of his works
even though he was living in New York and not subject to internment. See Soichi Sunami’s
biography in the appendix of this book.
- In another case, all the work of Los Angeles photographer T. Mukai, which had been left on
his family’s property, was lost when the home was destroyed by arson before he returned from
internment. Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 8.
- Ibid., 4.
- Sandra Kroupa, “Robert Monroe, Head, Special Collections University of Washington
Libraries, May 1963–October 1980,” April 18, 2008 (in author’s possession). Robert Monroe
hired Sandra Kroupa in 1968. She worked with him in University of Washington Special
Collections until his retirement in 1980, and they remained friends until his death.
- Robert Monroe, “Light and Shade: Pictorial Photography in Seattle, 1920–1940, and the
Seattle Camera Club,” in Turning Shadows into Light: Art and Culture of the Northwest’s Early Asian/Pacifi c
Community, ed. Mayumi Tsutakana and Alan Chong Lau (Seattle: Young Pine Press and Asian
Multi-Media Center, 1982), 12.
- Boye De Mente, Elements of Japanese Design (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle Publishing, 2006), xv.
- Shelley Sang-Hee Lee, “ ‘Good American Subjects Done through Japanese Eyes,’ Race,
Nationality, and the Seattle Camera Club, 1924-1929,” Pacifi c Northwest Quarterly 96, no. 1
(Winter 2004–05): 29
- Kyo Koike, “The Seattle Camera Club,” Photo-Era 55, no. 4 (October 1925): 182.
- Manuscript by Shin-ichi Koike, Kyo Koike’s grandson, written in 2007 and translated by
Midori Koike Barbut (in author’s possession).
- Shuji Koike, Kyo Koike’s grandson, conversation with the author, at University of Washington
Libraries, Special Collections, July 2, 2007. Kyo Koike is reported to have said to his son, who
visited him in Seattle in 1925, that there was no other woman like her (his wife) around him,
which would explain why he never remarried. Manuscript by Shin-ichi Koike, written in 2007
and translated by Midori Koike Barbut (in author’s possession).
- Shuji Koike, conversation with the author, at University of Washington Libraries, Special
Collections, June 21, 2010.
- Iwao Matsushita, untitled biography of Kyo Koike, typescript, June 15, 1970, Box 15, Iwao
Matsushita Papers, Acc. 2718, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections (hereafter,
Matsushita Papers).
- Louis Fiset, Imprisoned Apart: The World War II Correspondence of an Issei Couple (Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 1997), 4-5, 8-9.
- Shuji Koike, conversation with the author, at University of Washington Libraries, Special
Collections, June 22, 2010.
- Matsushita wrote that he and Koike saw each other every day. Iwao Matsushita to Shin-ichi
Koike, January 13, 1975 (copy in author’s possession).
- Kyo Koike, “Why I Am a Pictorial Photographer,” Photo-Era 61, no. 3 (September 1928): 123.
- Ibid.
- This is based on the fact that there are notes on the backs of Matsushita’s prints about the
paper types he used and on his still-life photograph about developing chemicals.
- Reed, Japanese Photography in America, 65.
- Koike mentions his work that was included in the 1920 Frederick & Nelson Salon in his Photo-
Era article, “Why I Am a Pictorial Photographer,” 124.
- Article VI of “Rules of the Seattle Camera Club,” published in Notan, March 13, 1925.
- Monroe, “Light and Shade,” 12. There is some discrepancy in the number of charter members;
Notan, the bulletin of the club, gives the number as higher. Robert Monroe’s list of the
charter members of the Seattle Camera Club includes: J. Amano, R Azuma, Y. Chiba, M.
Fujita, I Higashiyama, S. Hirano, Y Idzumi, H. Ihashi, Y. T. Iwasaki, T. Kashiwagi, H. Kira,
K. Koike, K. Koitabashi, T. Koiwai, F. Kunishige, T. Matsubara M. Matsumoto, I Matsushita,
T. Miyauchi, T. Miyazaki, Y. Morinaga, S. Nagakura, M. Nakamura, S. Nezu, S. Nimomiya, F.
Ogasawara, H. Okita, S. Okugawa, H. Onishi, B. Sakaino, R. Sato, R. Sawaji, T. Shigeta, T.
Shimoda, Z. Shimomura, S. Tada, R. Tamura, I. Tanaka, and S. Toda.
- Monroe, “Light and Shade,” 9-10.
- Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 7.
- Kyo Koike, “My Photographic Trip,” The Miniature Camera (April 1934): 129.
- Lee, “ ‘Good American Subjects Done through Japanese Eyes,’ ” 31.
- Ibid., 30.
- Notan, April 29, 1926.
- Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 5.
- Reed, Japanese Photography in America, exhibit folder, n.p.
- Koike, “Why I Am a Pictorial Photographer,” 123.
- Hoshin Kuroda, “The Characteristics of Japanese Art,” trans. Kyo Koike, Notan, March 11,
1927.
- Kyo Koike, “Japanese Art in Photography,” Camera Craft 32, no. 3 (March 1925): 112.
- Kyo Koike, “Pictorial Photography from a Japanese Standpoint,” The Ground Glass 7, no. 6
(October 1925): 5.
- Kazuko Nakane and Alan Chong Lau, “Shade and Shadow: An Asian American Vision behind
Northwest Lenses,” International Examiner, January 23, 1991, p. 7.
- Arthur Wesley Dow, Composition: Understanding Line, Notan and Color (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2007),
53, republication of Composition: A Series of Exercises in Art Structure for the Use of Students and Teachers,
9th ed. (New York: Doubleday, Page and Co., 1920).
- Photo-Era (November 13, 1925): 186.
- Koike, “Seattle Camera Club,” 182.
- David Martin, conversation with the author, at University of Washington Libraries, Special
Collections, 2007.
- Walter B. Pitkin, Careers after Forty (New York: Whittlesey House, 1937), 217.
- David Martin, conversation with the author, at University of Washington Libraries, Special
Collections, 2007.
- David F. Martin, “McBride, Ella E. (1862–1965),” HistoryLink.org, http://historylink.org/
index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&fi le_id=8513.
- Lee, “ ‘Good American Subjects Done through Japanese Eyes,’ ” 25.
- David F. Martin, Pioneer Women Photographers (Seattle: Frye Art Museum, 2002), 16.
- Notan, November 12, 1926, and Notan, December 10, 1926.
- Lee, “ ‘Good American Subjects Done through Japanese Eyes,’ ” 25. The January 11, 1929, issue
of Notan contained this announcement: “Dr. K. Koike, the Chairman of the Seattle Camera
Club, was elected an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, London,
England. He is the only Japanese and the only one in the Seattle pictorial circle, to have the
honor at least at the present time.…H. H. Blacklock, Secretary.”
- Monroe, “Light and Shade,” 21.
- Kyo Koike, “Mount Rainier,” Camera Craft 33, no. 3 (March 1926): 117.
- Matsushita’s photograph was later shown in the World’s Master’s Exhibition of the Cardiff
Camera Club.
- Kyo Koike, “Photographing Mountains and Peaks,” in The American Annual of Photography (1929),
36-40. It is probable that the two fi gures in the Sea of Clouds are Iwao and Hanaye Matsushita.
The peak in the distance is Mount Adams.
- “Fame Travels across Sea to Seattle Artist’s Door,” The Star, October 27, 1925.
- Robert Monroe and Martha Kingsbury, “The Ritual Life for Frank Kunishige, 1878–1960,”
undated typescript, F. A. Kunishige, University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections
(hereafter, Kunishige File).
- “Pictorial Photography,” The Town Crier, December 13, 1924, pp. 26-34. While The Town Crier
and Kunishige called the allegory “The Queen of the Dead,” by Talhora, the magazine apparently
was referring to the sixteenth-century publication by Cordova, “The Queen of Death,”
which the French reviewer in the Revue du Vrai et du Beau identifi ed.
- “To the Seattle Photographers, Amateur, and Professional,” Notan, March 11, 1927.
- Lee, “ ‘Good American Subjects Done through Japanese Eyes,’ ” 31.
- “Photographic News,” Notan, October 11, 1929, the farewell issue, p. 10.
- Notan, March 8, 1929.
- “Looking through the Lens,” The Town Crier, December 17, 1930, pp. 9-15.
- J. H. Edwards, letter “To Whom It May Concern,” July 14, 1942, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Louis Fiset, “In the Matter of Iwao Matsushita: A Government Decision to Intern a Seattle
Japanese Enemy Alien in World War II,” in Nikkei in the Pacifi c Northwest: Japanese Americans and
Japanese Canadians in the Twentieth Century, ed. Louis Fiset and Gail M. Nomura (Seattle: Center
for the Study of the Pacifi c Northwest in association with the University of Washington
Press, 2005), 215. Eventually the FBI destroyed the confi scated possessions, except for, oddly
enough, the home movies, which were returned to Matsushita in 1945 while he was interned at
Minidoka in Idaho.
- Ibid., 231.
- Seattle Post-Intelligencer, December 9, 1941.
- Iwao Matsushita to Kyo Koike, Oct 17, 1942, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Matsushita to Koike, July 14, 1942, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Matsushita to Koike, January 8, 1943, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Matsushita to Koike, July 14, 1942, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Matsushita to Koike, October 17, 1942, Box 15, Matsushita Papers.
- Quoted in Fiset, Imprisoned Apart, 213-14.
- Twin Falls (ID) Telegram, July 16, 1945, p. 5.
- Fiset, Imprisoned Apart, 86.
- Ibid., 88.
- Quoted in ibid., 65.
- Iwao Matsushita to Shin-ichi Koike, January 13, 1975 (in author’s possession).
- David Martin, conversation with the author, at University of Washington Libraries, Special
Collections, 2007.
- Wasserman, in “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” describes the diffi culty that Dennis Reed had in
1988 persuading a family to allow him even to see beautiful work made by a man who died in
1941. The family was suspicious about why he would want to see work that had been hidden
away and were reluctant at fi rst to let him use it in the exhibition.
- Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 8.
- There are many discussions of Pictorialism as being out of date, as the form became greatly
devalued in the photographic art world from the 1930s on. A statement from a book on the
photographer Olive Cotton, who started out working in the Pictorial and moved on to the
modern style, sums up the case against Pictorialism: “In Australian photographic history, the
1930s are characterized by the demise of Pictorialism (a movement known colloquially as the
‘fuzzy wuzzy school’ that had been dominant in photography circles since the early 1900s) and
the rise of modernism. Pictorialist work is invariably devalued in this scenario, considered to
be out-of-step with the realities of modern life. The Beauty of the new age, wrote G. H. Saxon
Mills in 1931, ‘is only for those who themselves are aware of the “zeitgeist”—who belong consciously
and proudly to this age, and have not their eyes forever wistfully fi xed on the past.’ ”
Helen Ennis, Olive Cotton: Photographer (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1995), 8.
- Wasserman, “Restoring a Lost Legacy,” 6.
- Fiset, Imprisoned Apart, 90-93.
- Matsushita to Kenneth Allen, February 20, 1970, Box 2, Matsushita Papers.
- Before the 1980s, very few archives had dedicated positions responsible for photography collections.
Most archivists or librarians who managed such collections were trained to handle
textual materials such as books and papers or were historians but were not experts in photography.
- “Koike: Immigrant's Photos Hint at What Was Lost,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, April, 10, 1980.
- Kroupa, “Robert Monroe.”
- Ibid.
- Robert D. Monroe typescript, n.d., Kunishige File.
- Robert Monroe to Iwao Matsushita, August 25, 1970, Box 2, Matsushita Papers.
- Koike, “Seattle Camera Club,” 188.
