- Japanese dubbing voice for Clint Eastwood.
- He was the official voice of Lupin the 3rd in the first 3 TV series, the first 3 movies, and the first 6 TV specials. He was replaced by Kan'ichi Kurita, when he died on March 19, 1995.
- He was furious at being replaced with Toshio Furukawa for 'Lupin III: The Fuma Conspiracy' and didn't talk to Kazuhiko Katou for a long time.
- He had a habit of getting drunk and calling people at midnight. Kiyoshi Kobayashi later remarked, "It was quite annoying at the time, but now that Yasube has passed away, I may look back fondly on it.".
- He preferred Lupin III Part 1 to Part 2. He was dissatisfied with Part 2 for being too kid-oriented (for a show that has scenes depicting smoking, gun violence and depictions of topless women).
- He became tired while recording for Lupin III: Voyage to Danger (1993), so he had to sit down for the rest of the session. When recording finished, as Yamada went home, director Masaaki Osumi called to him, "I want you to heal your body and get well, and to appear in the work I have written.".
- He originally held the record of voicing Lupin the longest, until his successor Kanichi Kurita broke the record.
- He felt that as Clint Eastwood's roles became more manly, his own voice didn't fit.
- Like Lupin, Yamada had expensive tastes. He had many hobbies, including baseball, golf and playing the jazz piano.
- He felt that Lupin III was very close to his heart and had a picture of him on his business card.
- He was noted for being a strict acting teacher. Akira Kamiya and Eiko Masuyama recalled him being intimidating.
- He had a tendency to ad-lib during recording.
- He aspired to be an actor because he thought he would get the chance to sleep late. However, he found to his surprise that he couldn't actually do it.
- During a recording session while voicing Lupin III, he stopped because the crew hadn't finished animating the work. According to Goro Naya, Yamada didn't say, "Let's stop". Instead he said, "I can't do this. Hey, Goro, can you?".
- Yamada always said that he was unmotivated when he entered the studio for recording, but the way Goro Naya saw it, it was just Yamada's unexpected shyness, which would go away once he actually started performing.
- Voiced Honest John in the 1983 Japanese dub of Disney's 'Pinocchio'.
- His final Disney dubbing role was Bernard in 'The Rescuers Down Under'. He recorded his lines in late 1994 or early 1995, and the dub was released posthumously over a year later.
- He was hospitalized for hypokalemia in the spring of 1993. Around this time, he was repeatedly hospitalized and discharged due to difficulty walking, and more and more recordings in his later years were done while sitting in a chair.
- He was inspired to act in comedies after seeing Danny Kaye in 'The Secret Life of Walter Mitty'.
- Voice of Graham Chapman in the Japanese dub of the Monty Python films and series.
- Died on the 54th birthday of Tommi Piper, who dubbed Yamada in the 1984 German dub of 'The Castle of Cagliostro'.
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