Son of doctors, his first intention was to be a doctor, too, but during his attendance at the Tokyo Medical College in 1947, one novel he wrote was awarded a prize by a detective novel magazine, and after graduation in 1950, he decided to be a novelist. His favourite genres were the detective story and the ninja, "Koga Ninpocho" being the most famous. In 1956, two of his detective novels were converted into films, but from 1963 on, almost all of his 16 large screen adaptations were ninja novels. The success of the first movie, "Edo Ninpocho: Nanatsu no Kage" ("Record of Edo Ninjas: Seven Shadows") followed by "Tsukikage Ninpocho: Nijuichi no Manako" ("Account of Moon Shadow Ninjas: 21 Eyes" the same year, encouraged Toei Film Production into doing an entire film series about Yamada novels until 1969, firstly in B/W and CinemaScope.In 1964, Toei started the "Kunoichi" film series, with female ninjas, and this was be the key to its success. At the beginning of the 1980s, Toei produced two films more Makai tenshô (1981) ("Samurai Reincarnation") and Muerte de un ninja (1982) ("Iga Magic Story"), which centered on the fantastic side of Yamada ninja novels. Yamada wrote his last novel, "The Death of Jûbei Yagyu" in 1991, but his popularity did not weaken. From 1991 to 1998 "Kunoichi" and "Makai Tensho" were converted into two original video series. And again, two films were produced based on these stories in 1998 and 2003, respectively.
