Which real person inspired Japhy Ryder in The Dharma Bums?

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Portrait of Jack Kerouac, American novelist and poet, looking over his shoulder in a collared shirt, circa 1965. — Jack Kerouac American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac, c. 1965.

In the autobiographical novel The Dharma Bums (1958), the character Japhy Ryder is a thinly disguised portrait of the American poet Gary Snyder.1

The narrator of the book, Raymond Smith, is based on Jack Kerouac himself, and the novel chronicles the friendship between the two men as they explore spiritual understanding and Buddhist practice.1