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) combined with lyrics that described the tensions between men and women, or explored love themes, or just reflected local events of the time. The compositions were in well-known makams such as Rast, Hüzzam, Hicaz, Hüseyni and Nihavent. Kanto songs are remembered both by the names of their interpreters and their creators. There occurred a new change of trends after the late 1930s: there was a revival of interest in the kanto form. Although rather far from its fundamental principles a new type of kanto was önce again popular. Kanto was not anymore exclusively limited to stage performances; there began to