Kihei Tamamura was one of Japan's leading pictorialist from the early days of this movement. He was also the son of Kozaburo Tamamura, the famous Meiji Era commercial photographer who built a photo empire based out of Yokohama. Kihei seems to have turned professional around 1900 and have taken over his father's firm shortly thereafter. He is also thought to have taken many of the classic hand colored tourist views for his father's firm from that time. When the pictorialism movement hit Japan around 1910, Kihei became quite active in this genre and became known as one of the leading Japanese art photographers from 1915 to 1930. When the Great Kanto Earthquake struck Japan in 1923, his father's business was destroyed which may have oddly freed up Kihei to devote more time to his passion of art photography. However the family business was in ruin and never recovered. Kihei's work can often be found in Japanese photo journals and photo annuals during the 1920s including the the Camera Work like photo journal "Hakuyo"; and several of the Japan Photographic Annuals by Asahi Shimbun Publishing in the late 1920s. In the journals from the mid to late 1920s Kihei is always listed as being a resident of Osaka. He is often confused with his father by historians but is easy to identify due to the pictorialist style of his images.