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 regional police and the Imperial Army used the pretext of civil unrest to liquidate political dissidents. Socialists such as (平澤計七), anarchists such as Sakae Ōsugi and Noe Itō, and the Chinese communal leader, (王希天), were abducted and killed by local police and Imperial Army, who claimed the radicals intended to use the crisis as an opportunity to overthrow the Japanese government. Director Chongkong Oh made two documentary films about the pogrom: "Hidden Scars: The Massacre of Koreans from the Arakawa River Bank to Shitamachi in Tokyo" (1983) and "The Disposed-of Koreans: The Great Kanto Earthquake and Camp Narashino" (1986). They