The Third was a yakuza

Yakuza

, also known as , are members of traditional organized crime syndicates in Japan. The Japanese police, and media by request of the police, call them bōryokudan , literally "violence group", while the yakuza call themselves "ninkyō dantai" , "chivalrous organizations". The yakuza are notoriously...

 group based in Kumamoto

Kumamoto, Kumamoto

is the capital city of Kumamoto Prefecture on the island of Kyushu, Japan. Greater Kumamoto has a population of 1,460,000, as of the 2000 census...

, Kyushu

Kyushu

is the third largest island of Japan and most southwesterly of its four main islands. Its alternate ancient names include , , and . The historical regional name is referred to Kyushu and its surrounding islands....

, Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

. It was a secondary organization of the Kumamoto-rengo (熊本連合).

Founded by Yoshiaki Yamano in 1954 under the name , it changed its name to "Yamano-kai" in 1956. Masatoshi Minoda succeeded as its president in 1972, and Tetsuo Ikeda became the president in 1986.

The group dissolved in April 2001. However, many of its members formed a new group, the Sanshin-kai, in September of that year.

The Yamano-kai was designated by the Japanese police as a bōryokudan group from December 1992 to November 2001.

Successive presidents

• 1st: Yoshiaki Yamano (山野 義明)
• 2nd: Masatoshi Minoda (蓑田 正敏)
• 3rd: Tetsuo Ikeda (池田 鉄雄)