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 1923 Great Kantō earthquake The struck the Kantō Plain on the Japanese main island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. The earthquake had a magnitude of 7.9 on the moment magnitude scale (), with its focus deep beneath Izu Ōshima Island in Sagami Bay. The cause was a rupture of part of the convergent boundary where the Philippine Sea Plate is subducting beneath the Okhotsk Plate along the line of the Sagami Trough. Massacres such as the Kantō Massacre were