KAI, Yamanashi Prefecture--The term conscientious objector hadn't been coined when Takaichi Yamada decided to fake his own death to avoid military conscription in the Pacific War.

As the years passed and Yamada moved on with his life as a novelist writing on antiwar themes, he allowed the charade to continue, not even confiding in his wife initially or close friends.

His ruse involved forging his death certificate and other sleights of hand, and only fully came to light after he died at the age of 82 in 1990.

And that only occurred because his son Shigehiko sought to put the pieces of the puzzle together decades after he first realized things about his family life didn't add up.

He figured something was amiss when was he was in the third year at junior high school and asked for a copy of the family's registration in preparation for taking a high school entrance exam.

The document provided all those years ago by local authorities had an "X" in the space to specify his father. This meant his father was already dead as far as officialdom was concerned.

How could this be, he wondered, thinking about his father working in front of a desk with a cigarette in his hand.

“Huh?” Shigehiko asked his mother.

She replied to her son's amazement that the authorities regarded his father as dead “for various reasons.”

Decades later, Shigehiko, still a resident of Kai and now 80 years old, finally pieced the story together. 

What followed was pure detective work worthy of the many novels that Takaichi wrote after the war.

It transpired that his father called himself Takaichi but used a different kanji from his given name. He deleted his name from the register in 1943 when he was 35 and the Pacific War was at its height.

Early in his life, Takaichi was deeply involved in a movement to emancipate farmers and later, after he started working as a novelist, asked a doctor friend to provide him with a blank death registration form as material for a book he was writing.

He entered his name and cited pulmonary tuberculosis in the document as his cause of death. A fictional doctor's name was entered in the falsified certificate as having made the diagnosis 

Takaichi filled it out using his left hand to disguise his writing style and submitted the notice to the local authorities.

A week later, a letter arrive from the local government office that demanded “a cremation or burial certificate be sent as well.” While his wife appeared skeptical, Takaichi ignored the request, deciding to leave everything to fate.

Takaichi survived the war unscathed and never served on the front lines as a soldier.

HATCHED IDEA IN PRISON

During World War II, males as young as 20 were obligated to undergo tests for conscription. The age was later lowered to 19 as the war turned against Japan. Any individual receiving call-up orders, known as “akagami” (red paper) in Japan, was required to join the military.

The military service law stipulated that those attempting to evade conscription face a maximum prison term of three years.

People tried to dodge the draft in various ways: one man chopped off a finger with an ax while another starved himself to render his stomach empty before his conscription examination.

According to the Army Ministry’s annual statistics, as many as 1,801 males attempted to escape conscription or avoid liability in 1936.

Born into a poor farming family in Nagano Prefecture in central Japan, Takaichi spent his youth as an apprentice. After he turned 21, he joined a movement calling for farm rents to be lowered in neighboring Yamanashi Prefecture.

Takaichi ended up in police cells on 18 occasions, but he never stopped seeking to improve the rights of impoverished farmers and their social standing.

He started writing books from the age of 25 that depicted farmers and others whose lives were at the mercy of the war.

His writing activities drew the attention of the authorities and he ended up spending time behind bars.

An autobiographical title centered on a boy serving as a roof tile craftsman under strict wartime citizens control was determined by police as promoting an antiwar stance.

It was in prison that Takaichi came up with the bold idea of pretending to be dead.

“Few people considered warfare as a crime during World War II, though the notion is now common,” Takaichi wrote in his fictional autobiography to explain what he was thinking at the time. “I was confident that the war constituted a serious crime. So I opposed war. I erased my name in the family register so I would not serve as a soldier. That was the best I could do to voice opposition under the circumstance.”

DECEPTION WENT UNNOTICED

How the family register was successfully modified with a faked certificate is a story in itself. Records show Takaichi “died” on July 6, 1945, two years following the submission of his death diagnosis.

“He (Takaichi) was likely deemed to have passed away in the bombing of Kofu (the Yamanashi prefectural capital) in July 1945, leading to the acceptance of his death notice in the chaos of the war's aftermath,” said Toshinori Mishima, 74, a retired newspaper reporter who wrote a critical biography on Takaichi.

It still remains unclear how Takaichi was able to remain registered in his resident certificate after faking his death, but whatever the reason, it clearly was intended to ensure his family suffered no significant hardship because of his earlier deception.

After the war ended, Takaichi worked tirelessly at publishing antiwar novels and essays. According to Mishima, he released “far more than 100 titles.” Takaichi at one point established an agricultural magazine where he served as chief editor.

His family and the authorities recommended that Takaichi correct his family register but he would not budge. He simply said that it “represents a modicum of my antiwar drive,” and refused to offer a detailed explanation for his decision to stick to non-registered status even after the war had ended and democracy began flourishing in Japan.

ANTIWAR SYMBOL

When Takaichi’s death in 1990 was covered by a newspaper, a letter arrived at the bereaved family home that described Takaichi as “unpatriotic.” The sender threatened to “set fire” to the abode in an accompanying note.

Given that 3.1 million Japanese perished in the war and countless others were mobilized for the war effort, Shigehiko has mixed feelings about what his father did to avoid service on behalf of his country.

Still, Shigehiko remains proud of his father. Among those making him feel that way is Hiroaki Nakajima, 87, a retired high school teacher who lives in the town of Azumino, Nagano Prefecture, where Takaichi was born.

Six years ago, Nakajima republished Takaichi’s work in book form that was initially serialized in a magazine.

The title was lambasted for embodying an antiwar attitude in the wartime period. Nakajima and others organized a reading session to reflect on warfare based on the story to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war.

“He (the writer) does not make an issue of his protest against war in an obvious fashion,” said Nakajima, explaining the appeal of Takaichi’s creations. “Instead, he portrays the daily life of ordinary folk. They lead a strained life under strict control. Depicting such a small life renders readers aware that those days were nothing out of the ordinary.”

Nakajima, speculating on Takaichi’s motive, called him a man who “went as far as to cut ties with the state via his family register to live with his his beliefs.”

Living with no family register following the end of World War II clearly meant a great deal to Takaichi in symbolizing his opposition to warfare, Nakajima said, adding he believes that stance still represents something important today.