Poetry Kanto journal's origins can be traced back to the founding of the Kanto Poetry Center in 1968 by Professor Emeritus William I. Elliott, when he proposed a four-fold center to be housed at Kanto Gakuin University—the first of its kind and scope in Japan, to include a library of contemporary poetry, a poetry journal, regular poetry readings in the university, and an annual poetry conference. The Center, modeled after American counterparts, was originally directed by Kanto Gakuin's Prof. Naoyuki Yagyū and his colleagues, Kazuo Kawamura and William I. Elliott, and has over the years sought, in Elliott's words, "to promote the
Kanto (music) with the Beret), "Kadın Asker", and "Olursa" (If Women Were Soldiers). Kanto had a tremendous impact on contemporary Turkish popular music. However, the word Kanto eventually became more of a generalized umbrella term than a precise definition of a musical genre. Any tune that does not follow any conventions, or any song that appealed to the trends and tastes of the time it is released is labeled kanto. Any music instrumented in a novel way is also labeled kanto. Nurhan Damcıoğlu is an example of a contemporary (post 1980s) artist labeled as a kanto singer. Most rebetiko songs are based