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) and Darulelhan (Istanbul Conservatory of Music) had trained musicians that turned out to work as kanto artists. Before the 1930s, Western lifestyle and western art had put pressure on the traditional Turkish formats which were marginalized. The operetta, the tango and later the charleston, and the foxtrot overshadowed kanto. Kanto's popularity began to fade, the centers of entertainment shifted and the theaters of Galata and Direklerarası were eventually closed. Turkish female artists who were not receptive to kanto's typical ribaldry chose to turn away from it. The kanto singers of this period were also composers. The songs had simple melodies