Jun Yamamura

Tokyo-born Jun Yamamura moved to Kobe as a student, where he became friends with Iku Takenaka and Kiyoshi Fukuhara. Together, they founded the poetry magazine Rashin (Mariner’s Compass) in 1924. It was one of the numerous magazines published in Japan during the short period when the urban modernism movement swept through the country. They also set up a publishing company called Kaikō Shijn Kurabu (Seaport Poets Club), from which Jun’s first poetry collection Osoharu (Late Spring) was launched. Yamamura is known for his lyricism and its touches of urban modernism and Neue Sachlichkeit.  He remained near Kobe for the rest of his life and served at one point as a councilman for a nearby city, Nishinomiya.