Stored with two other Niikuni photographs as a card set. Wikipedia: Seiichi Niikuni (新国誠一 Niikuni Seiichi, December 7, 1925 "“ August 23, 1977) was a Japanese poet and painter. He was one of the foremost pioneers of the international avant-garde concrete poetry movement, creating works of calligraphic, visual and aural poetry. He is recognized as one of the most important poets of recent times in Japanese and German textbooks. In 1964, Niikuni participated in the E. E. Cummings study group held in Yukinobu Kagiya's house, and met Yasuo Fujitomi while there.[6] On June 4, he established an association called the Association of Study of Arts or ASA (芸術研究協会 Geijutsu KenkyÅ« Kyōkai) with Fujitomi with the objective of exploring and experimenting with concrete poetry. They published a namesake magazine ASA and in it introduced both Japanese and foreign concrete poetry, and also translated poems by Haroldo de Campos into Japanese. Fujitomi would also introduce the Brazilian concrete poetry group Noigandres' member Luis Carlos Vinholes to Niikuni, and Vinholes in turn introduced the French poet Pierre Garnier to Niikuni. Niikuni would later send Zero-on to Garnier. In 1966, Niikuni and Garnier published a collective poetry work together called Nichifutsu ShishÅ« (日仏詩集) in France. Furthermore, in 1969 he was asked to and displayed his works at the German Visual Poetry exhibition at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen. Requests from abroad to display his works kept increasing, and Niikuni gradually started to set his sights on foreign exhibitions. In 1974, he held a one-man exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in London. From an early age, Niikuni had chest ailments[9] and was constantly worried about his health. He was reportedly very happy to reach the age of 50, but would succumb to a sudden illness only two years later on August 23, 1977. He died in his home in Tokyo at the age of 52 (kazoedoshi). The publication of ASA also came to an end, with the seventh issue published in 1974 remaining as the last issue. -- Source of annotation: Marvin or Ruth Sackner.