Yoko Nishi is a koto player. She is originally from Wakayama City. She studied under both Tadao Sawai and Kazue Sawai. Nishi graduated from the Department of Traditional Japanese Music at the Tokyo University of the Arts. She went to Columbia University as a visiting scholar and has toured throughout Japan and overseas, including to America, Germany, Hungary and Brazil, as a solo artist and has given performances at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Expo 2010 in Shanghai, Carnegie Hall, the Japan Cultural Institute in Paris and other high-profile events and locations. Nishi is also a koto teacher in Wakayama, which is a pursuit she began immediately upon graduating university and has maintained ever since. She collaborates with artists from various countries and different musical areas; she practices musical improvisation; she gives performances using reproduction instruments; she composes and performs new pieces; and she uses all of these to facilitate the creativity of her performances, her compositions, her planning and her teaching in order to communicate the charm and appeal of the koto in a multifaceted way.