Early Life
Koizumi was born on 8 July 1885 in the village of Komatsuka Oaza (around 20 miles north of Tokyo at that time; the entire area is now part of metropolitan Tokyo) in Ibaraki Prefecture, Japan. He was the younger son of a tenant farmer, Shukichi Koizumi, and his wife, Katsu. Koizumi had an elder brother, Chiyokichi, and a younger sister, Iku. In 1897, aged 12, Koizumi began training in the art of kendo at school. Koizumi also began learning English from a neighbour who had been to America.
As the younger son in the family, he had the options of starting his own farm or being adopted into a family without a male heir (a Japanese custom); he disliked both options. In July 1900, shortly before he turned 15, he left home to seek his fortune in Tokyo, where he enrolled as a trainee telegrapher under a government scheme. In 1901, he started practising jujutsu under Tago Nobushige at the Tenjin Shinyo-ryu. Once qualified as a telegrapher he worked for a while in Tokyo before taking a job on the railways in Korea. In 1904, he trained under Yamada Nobukatsu, a former samurai. By now, Koizumi had decided that he wanted to study electricity, and that the best place to do so was in the United States of America. He travelled through Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, and India, working as he went. While in Singapore in 1905, he trained under Tsunejiro Akishima.
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