The was a Japanese underworld organization formed by Yoshio Kodama in 1964, and named for the

Kantō region The is a geography, geographical region of Honshu, the largest island of Japan. In a common definition, the region includes the Greater Tokyo Area and encompasses seven prefectures of Japan, prefectures: Chiba Prefecture, Chiba, Gunma Prefe ...

from which it drew most of its membership. Kodama envisioned the Kantō-kai as a secret national police force, with the aim of forwarding the far

right-wing Right-wing politics is the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable, typically supporting this position based on natural law, economics, authority, property ...

views he and other organized criminals often held. Kodama had originally envisioned a Japan-wide gangster society, but in 1963 Kazuo Taoka and his

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 ...

-based

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 ...

gang refused to join, leaving Kodama with a Kantō-heavy organization.''Yakuza: Japan's Criminal Underworld'', David E. Kaplan, 2003 The group disbanded in January 1965, after only fifteen months, but was a crucial step in uniting the many post-war gangs into a more coherent entity (the modern

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 ...

) instead of disparate, warring factions.

References

Yakuza groups 1964 establishments in Japan 1965 disestablishments in Japan Organizations established in 1964 Organizations disestablished in 1965 {{Japan-crime-stub