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
1923 Great Kantō earthquake as the earthquake. These winds caused fires to spread rapidly. The Emperor and Empress were staying at Nikko when the earthquake struck Tokyo, and were never in any danger. Many homes were buried or swept away by landslides in the mountainous and hilly coastal areas in western Kanagawa Prefecture; about 800 people died. A collapsing mountainside in the village of Nebukawa, west of Odawara, pushed the entire village and a passenger train carrying over 100 passengers, along with the railway station, into the sea. A tsunami with waves up to high struck the coast of Sagami Bay, Bōsō Peninsula, Izu