The Ichiwa-kai (一和会) was a

yakuza , also known as , are members of transnational organized crime syndicates originating in Japan. The Japanese police and media (by request of the police) call them , while the yakuza call themselves . The English equivalent for the term ''yak ...

gang based in

Osaka is a Cities designated by government ordinance of Japan, designated city in the Kansai region of Honshu in Japan. It is the capital of and most populous city in Osaka Prefecture, and the List of cities in Japan, third-most populous city in J ...

Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...

. It was formed on June 13, 1984 when Hiroshi Yamamoto, a top lieutenant in the

Yamaguchi-gumi is Japan's largest ''yakuza'' organization. It is named after its founder Harukichi Yamaguchi. Its origins can be traced back to a loose labor union for longshoreman, dockworkers in Kobe before World War II. It is one of the largest organized cr ...

, broke from that gang to form his own organization with over 10,000 members. The split stemmed from professional jealousy: Yamamoto had been seen as a contender for the role of ''kumicho'', or Godfather, in the Yamaguchi-gumi, and was enraged when a rival, Masahisa Takenaka, was chosen. In 1985, the Ichiwa-kai faction sent a team of hitmen to assassinate Takenaka at his mistress's home in

Suita is a city located in Osaka Prefecture, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 381,238 in 182,636 households, and a population density of 11,000 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . It is a suburban city of Osaka City and a p ...

, Osaka. The killing of the Yamaguchi Godfather sparked a

Kansai The or the lies in the southern-central region of Japan's main island Honshū. The region includes the prefectures of Nara, Wakayama, Kyoto, Osaka, Hyōgo and Shiga, often also Mie, sometimes Fukui, Tokushima and Tottori. The metropoli ...

-wide yakuza war between the two groups in which over 20 gangsters were killed. The Yamaguchi-gumi eventually won what became known as the Yama-Ichi War, but it proved to be a

Pyrrhic victory A Pyrrhic victory ( ) is a victory that inflicts such a devastating toll on the victor that it is tantamount to defeat. Such a victory negates any true sense of achievement or damages long-term progress. The phrase originates from a quote from ...

as many of its members were arrested in the process. Most of the Ichiwa-kai defectors were eventually allowed to return to the Yamaguchi-gumi. Yamamoto retired, and the Ichiwa-kai dissolved in March, 1989.''Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld'', David E. Kaplan, 2003

References

1984 establishments in Japan 1989 disestablishments in Japan Yakuza groups {{crime-stub