My father went to the battlefield for the sake of peace —1100 years of soul flows through me— Hirohito Ochiai (Legal name: Norihide Ochiai, 40th generation of the Ochiai family)
Prologue: I hate war
—Vivid memories poured into me by my father and mother
Born as the 40th generation of the Ochiai family, I
carry the bloodline of 1,100 years continuing from the Heian period,
and I live in this era now.
I hate war.
However, that is not a vague pacifism.
It is not the kind of emotion where one frowns
at seeing images of war on the TV news.
My "hatred of war"
is rooted in a place
that is deeper and more physical.
There is a story my father told me.
To escape from enemy soldiers on the battlefield, my father hid himself in a pile of corpses and instructed his subordinates to do the same. Eventually, the enemy soldiers pointed a flamethrower at them. Meat juices dripped down from the burned corpses. My father used his mental strength to endure the smell and the heat.
However, one of his subordinates, unable to bear the terror,
stood up unsteadily. At that moment, a gunshot rang out.
This is not a story from a movie.
It is a story my father actually experienced.
There is also a story I heard from my mother.
While my mother was a young girl fleeing to an air-raid shelter, machine-gun fire attacked from behind. She instinctively lay down with the friend whose hand she was holding. After the storm of bullets passed overhead, my mother was alive. However, the friend next to her had been hit in the neck by a bullet and died instantly. At my mother's neck, a fragment of a bullet had struck her protective stone amulet. The amulet saved my mother's life.
My mother always cried when she told this story.
As if the body temperature of the friend whose hand she was holding
still remained in her hand...
I grew up hearing stories like this since I was a child.
My father would explain while showing me war movies.
"This is quite different from reality."
"This is exactly how it was."
My father pointed out without mercy the parts that the movies glorified.
The real battlefield, he said, was smellier, more painful, and more miserable. Thanks to that, the horror of war was etched into me as if it were my own experience.
My father always said.
How ugly human conflict is.
My father continued to convey to me the depth of human karma.
It was not a sermon.
It was an urgent sincerity
that he could not help but pass on to his son
what he himself had seen.
That is why I hate war.
Knowing the ugliness of human karma to the marrow of my bones.
However—and here I pause.
Why did that father, who hated war more than anyone else,
go to the battlefield of his own volition?
To answer that question, I must first begin
with the story of the Ochiai family, a clan
with a 1,100-year history.
In the closest place of that history, there was one man.
My father—Gentaro Ochiai.
Born as the 40th generation of the Ochiai family with its 1,100-year history, why do I, while hating war,
feel proud of my father who went to the battlefield?
I will now tell the answer to that question.
Chapter 1: The Boy of the Great Earthquake
—From the day he lost everything, wisdom began
I have a scroll in my possession.
When I unroll that scroll kept in a paulownia box, countless names written in ink and records of their lives are connected vertically and horizontally. The Ochiai Clan Genealogy—the family tree of the Ochiai family.
The first name begins with the 59th Emperor of Japan,
Emperor Uda.
The bloodline of the "Uda Genji," which traces its ancestry to Emperor Uda who ascended the throne in the Heian period, took root in Ochiai Village, Sakai District, Omi Province, and came to use the surname "Ochiai."
They were recorded as samurai in the Kamakura period,
survived the turmoil of the Northern and Southern Courts, and lived through the Muromachi and Sengoku periods
—the history of the Ochiai family overlaps with the history of Japan itself.
When I was in elementary school,
I was taken by my father to visit Sasaki Shrine in Shiga Prefecture.
At that shrine, known as the head shrine of the Uda Genji,
I came face to face with the grand family tree.
The chief priest explained to me, "Only direct descendants of the Ochiai family can see this grand family tree." The name of my father, Gentaro Ochiai, was also recorded on the grand family tree.
1,100 years of history is publicly engraved in a shrine of this country. When I witnessed that, something indescribable welled up in my young heart.
It was the feeling that my existence was not just born by chance in this era, but that I exist as an inevitability
within the long, long flow of time.
Entering the modern era, the 37th generation, Ryozo, served as the village head of Kamikoma Village while making unique inventions in the manufacture of storage batteries and obtaining patents.
And he generously distributed the ancestral lands to the farmers, invested his own wealth to build a bridge in Kizu, and built Kamikoma Station. In the days when Kamikoma Station was still part of the Japanese National Railways, a framed photograph of Ryozo was displayed in front of the station. When I was an elementary school student, I actually saw that frame.
Ryozo's eldest son, Toshio, inherited those inventions and established a manufacturing factory in Tokyo. The business was a success, and the Ochiai family became wealthy. It is said that when my father, Gentaro, was an elementary school student, he was driven to and from school in a car with a chauffeur.
This was in an era when private cars were still rare.
However, that prosperity came to a sudden end.
September 1, 1923, at 11:58 AM.
The Great Kanto Earthquake occurred.
Magnitude 7.9. Centered on Tokyo and Yokohama, the number of dead and missing exceeded 100,000.
It was the greatest natural disaster modern Japan had ever experienced.
That day, Gentaro Ochiai was in Tokyo.
He was still an elementary school student. The boy who had lived a life without hardship, being driven to and from school by a chauffeur, lost everything from that day on.
His father, Toshio, 41 years old. Deceased. His mother, Ben, also...
Passed away on the same day.
In a single day, he lost both his father and mother. The boy, now alone in the world, took his older sister and younger sister by the hand and managed to return to Kyoto alive. The wealth of the Ochiai family, the factory in Tokyo, the affluent life—everything vanished into the flames and rubble of that day.
However, Gentaro did not stop.
My father used his wisdom.
If he sold fish in the ordinary way, it would take time and effort, and he wouldn't be able to go to school. Thinking this, Gentaro went to the wholesale market before dawn and bought fresh fish. He loaded them onto a handcart and went around to the homes of the wealthy one by one. He would take orders, and when a buyer appeared, he would skillfully fillet and sell the fish on the spot according to the customer's wishes—for sashimi, for stewing.
Before long, he had customers,
and by the time school started, he was sold out.
In any situation, he would instantly find the optimal solution for that moment. This talent already resided in Gentaro from the time he was a boy.
The boy who had been driven by car until yesterday was running to the market before dawn.
However, for Gentaro, perhaps this was not a downfall.
For Gentaro, who was raised with the teachings of a samurai by his father as a child of a samurai family, perhaps he knew deep in his blood that adversity is the very place that makes a real human being.
Eventually, his older sister became a teacher, and his younger sister married.
The boy who had protected his family went on to the Imperial Japanese Army Academy and graduated at the top of his class as a member of the 48th graduating class.
Among his classmates was Prince Mikasa Takahito.
What my father always talked about with Prince Mikasa—that was to create a peaceful world without war.
In the Japan of that time, that was an ideology that should not be spoken aloud. In an era when militarism covered everything and war was considered the mission of the state, the two young officers were secretly dreaming of peace.
With the rank of infantryman or corporal, one cannot save many people.
That is precisely why he would go to a high position.
And he vowed in his heart that he would never let his subordinates die and would return them to their families—that is what my father swore.
And I realized one thing later.
The day after that day when my father lost everything—September 1st.
September 2nd is my birthday.
One day, while tracing his childhood memories, my father quietly whispered to me, "The day after that fateful day is Norihide's birthday..." In those words, there was a deep emotion that only someone who has lived through long years can possess.
I was born in 1964—Showa 39.
The year the Tokyo Olympics were held and the Tokaido Shinkansen was opened.
I was born in the year that Japan, having achieved a miraculous recovery from the burnt ruins, opened its doors to the world.
The son born the day after my father lost everything on September 1st let out his first cry in the year Japan stepped into a new era.
To call this a coincidence is too perfect.
The 1,100-year bloodline is thus quietly, but surely,
passed on to the next generation.
Chapter 2: The Indomitable Spirit
—Chopsticks, a wooden sword, and the silence of the bamboo grove
The Ochiai family had family treasures.
A sword and armor.
When I, as a young child, tried to approach them, my father stopped me quietly but firmly. "Do not touch," he said. In that voice, there was not a command, but deep respect.
The sword and armor are not mere tools or decorations.
The soul of the Ochiai family, which has lived through 1,100 years of history,
resides there, he said.
However, one day, my father called me when I was an elementary school student.
And he let me hold that sword.
Heavy.
At its weight, I almost cried out.
Is a sword this heavy? I felt as if the existence of the many ancestors who had once held this sword was condensed within that weight.
My father said quietly.
"A sword is not for swinging around.
A sword is essentially something that should not be drawn.
The only time it is okay to draw it is when you are prepared to die."
And my father taught me one phrase.
"Seek life in death."
Only those who are prepared to die
can truly live.
I accepted the weight of those words with my whole body as a young child.
My father taught me kendo.
Not only was he an assistant instructor,
but my father's teaching, having mastered real swordsmanship, was fierce.
My father always said.
"At any time, if you see an opening in me, come at me."
One day, I tried testing those words.
I targeted my father while he was eating.
I waited for the moment my father was eating with chopsticks,
and secretly brought out a wooden sword.
With a sense of mischief, a little curiosity, and—a childish calculation that surely he couldn't defeat me while eating.
I raised the wooden sword and swung it down at my father's head.
The next moment...
The wooden sword stopped.
My father's chopsticks...
had caught the wooden sword.
Moreover, the wooden sword did not budge.
As if it were fixed with superglue,
it did not move at all.
He didn't even seem to have stopped eating.
My father quietly put down his chopsticks and looked at me.
It was not an angry expression.
It was a calm, yet deep gaze.
"Evil thoughts and presence are conveyed to others."
My father said that. If you think something bad, those evil thoughts and presence will definitely be conveyed to the other person. Therefore, he said, he knew from the moment I brought out the wooden sword—that was it.
And my father continued.
"By casting away all evil intentions, a pure heart and a sincere,
clean heart will harbor a strong soul.
That soul will grow into an unwavering, strong spirit."
Indomitable—an unyielding spirit that is not moved by any difficulty and does not bend its will.
What my father wanted to convey to me was not the technique of the sword. Through the sword, he was trying to teach me how to be as a human being.
And there is another memory.
When I was in elementary school, our house was in Mizuho Ward, Nagoya. In an environment surrounded by mountains, I loved living things, so my father often took me to the mountains. One day, as usual, I entered the mountain with my father, and he stopped in front of a bamboo grove. And quietly, he drew his sword.
At that moment, the air changed.
A silence visited as if time had stopped. It was a stillness where the wind, the sound of insects, everything seemed to have moved away. The next moment, my father moved. With a quiet and beautiful movement like a dance, unlike the sword fighting on TV, thick bamboo was cut one after another with a thud...
A path was made in the bamboo grove in an instant.
To the end of the bamboo grove... in an instant...
I... forgot even to breathe...
I was watching that scene.
That silence, the intensity, and the beauty like a dance are still burned into my mind.
The sword is not something to be wielded with force.
It is something that naturally flows from the body of one who has prepared their soul—my father showed me that on that day, not with words, but with his body.
Later, my father handed me a book.
It was "Hagakure."
"Hagakure"—a book that records the essence of Bushido, known for the phrase "Bushido is found in death."
That experience of catching the wooden sword with chopsticks,
and the memory of the silence of the bamboo grove,
made me understand the words of Hagakure as flesh and blood.
Only those who do not fear death
can truly live
—this teaching would later be embodied by my father himself in the wilderness of Nomonhan.
And, in that silence of the bamboo grove,
perhaps there was the origin of my "soul's voice."
Chapter 3: A Week at Nomonhan
—1,000 tanks, the night I let my subordinates escape
Summer, 1939.
Nomonhan, in the border region between Mongolia and Manchuria.
On the wilderness stretching to the horizon, the Japanese and Soviet armies clashed.
The Soviet Union deployed what was then called the world's strongest armored division, and the Japanese army suffered devastating losses in the face of an overwhelming difference in firepower. This battle, later known as the "Nomonhan Incident," is etched in history as one of the greatest defeats the Imperial Japanese Army ever experienced.
In that wilderness was Army Lieutenant Colonel Gentaro Ochiai.
As an artillery elite, my father possessed advanced ballistic calculation skills. An artilleryman is not merely someone who fires a cannon.
It is a specialized profession requiring high intellectual ability to instantly calculate countless variables—distance, angle, wind direction, temperature—and determine the optimal firing data.
My father had exceptional ability in that field.
One day, my father's position was surrounded by Soviet tanks.
There were 1,000 of them.
To the ends of the horizon, iron giants were packed tightly together. The roar of their engines shook the earth, and their turrets were aimed at our position. Everywhere I looked, it was a wall of iron and fire.
When my father showed me that photo as a child, my spine froze.
In that photo, which my father said he took calmly, the Soviet tank groups filling the horizon looked as if they would continue infinitely.
I have never seen a photo that terrified me as much as that one since.
That photo was lost during repeated moves, but that terror still lives in my heart.
However, my father did not run.
My father first called all his subordinates.
Then, creating the pretext of "go deliver these orders," he sent them all away from the position one by one.
To let no one die...
To return them to their families...
Thinking only of that...
From the day he entered the military academy, that was what my father had sworn in his heart.
No matter what situation he was placed in, he would not bend what he believed to be right.
The lives of his subordinates were heavier than his own life.
Left alone, my father made the most of his artillery knowledge.
He maintained the position while making it appear as if many soldiers were still there. The Soviet army could not attack the precise artillery position without a plan. A standoff continued.
And in the midst of that tension, my father even calmly took photos.
With that stillness possessed only by those who have accepted death.
For one week, all alone.
Day one, day two, day three—
As time passed, food and water ran out. But my father did not waver. The spirit that stopped time in the bamboo grove supported my father in the Nomonhan wilderness as well.
“Seek life in the midst of death”
The words my father once taught me were literally alive inside that position.
Day four, day five, day six—.
The Soviet tank groups still surrounded the position. The siege did not break. But my father did not move either.
People say that war is about defeating the enemy.
But for my father, war was about returning his subordinates alive.
For that conviction, my father stood alone, facing 1,000 tanks.
A man who wished for peace spent the loneliest time of his life on the battlefield.
In that paradox, everything about the human being known as Gentaro Ochiai is condensed.
And then, the night of the fateful seventh day arrived.
Chapter 4: The Voice of God
—The night of the seventh day, the man who walked through the enemy lines
The night of the seventh day came.
Food and water were gone, and his physical strength was near its limit. The 1,000 tanks still surrounded the position. There was no sign of the siege breaking anywhere.
By human calculation, this was the end.
However, that night, my father
heard the voice of God.
When my father told me that story, I was still young.
I could not fully understand the meaning of the words "voice of God." But my father's expression was different from usual. It was a gaze that seemed to look far away, yet was seeing something certain.
“I heard a voice,” my father said quietly.
“Go!” it said.
Following that voice, my father stood up.
He started walking alone into the pitch-black wilderness of the night.
Heading straight into the middle of the enemy lines.
That silence when he drew his sword in front of the bamboo grove—that same sensation of time stopping must have enveloped my father's entire body.
Clearing away evil thoughts, with an innocent heart, he walked just by following the voice.
In the darkness, my father kept walking.
Eventually, a human shadow appeared from the darkness.
It was a few Soviet sentries.
They raised their hands and said "Ya" in Russian.
My father also raised his hand and responded in Russian.
For my father, who spoke seven languages, it was a natural action.
The darkness and distance were his allies.
In the dead of night, there was no distinguishing between a Japanese and a Russian.
The soldiers passed by, and my father calmly slipped through the enemy lines.
My father entered China.
There, he had a mentor with whom he had a long-standing connection.
That teacher, who was a doctor and served as the director of a hospital, welcomed my father and gave him a place to work at the hospital.
The mentor was a brilliant doctor.
Under that mentor, my father learned various forms of Eastern medicine, including herbal medicine, through practice. Possessing knowledge and skills in Western medicine, and adding the depth of Eastern medicine, my father eventually gained trust as an excellent doctor within the hospital.
As a Chinese doctor, my father treated many people.
When enemy soldiers eventually raided his hiding place, the Chinese people he had helped protected him at the risk of their own lives.
Love had saved a life.
When the war ended, my father finally returned to Japan.
However, in Japan, my father was already a war casualty.
His family register had been erased, and his former wife had remarried someone else.
A man who returned alive was dead on paper.
Could there be any greater irony?
But my father did not waver here either.
His spirit of perseverance supported him not only on the battlefield but also through the chaos of the postwar period.
Eventually, my father regained his family register and began a new life.
When he started a shipping business, his ship sank and he swam to safety from the Genkai Sea. He turned to the trading business, and there he met a woman who was painting while working as a secretary for a trading company—my mother, Shoko, whose art name was Keiko.
The place where my father, a descendant of the Uda Genji, and my mother, who carried the blood of the Heike, met was Shimonoseki, Yamaguchi Prefecture—Dannoura.
Dannoura. That is the strait where the Genji and Heike fought their final decisive battle in 1185. After 800 years, the Genji and Heike met again at Dannoura. My mother often said with a laugh, "Since my family line was Heike, it was a marriage between the Genji and the Heike."
My father had my mother study under the master of Japanese painting, Yuki Ogura, and raised her into an Inten-style Japanese painter.
He started a company in a then-new field called "Art Architecture" and established it under the name "Tokyo Studio."
My father was in charge of everything from civil engineering to design and construction, and with an innovative method not seen at the time where my mother painted on the interior walls, he worked on many buildings in Nagoya.
And in 1965, my father released a book to the world.
“Two Forgotten Possibilities”—The subtitle was "A New Philosophical Inquiry Attempting to Dissect the Structure of the Universe and the Mystery of Life."
The author's name was "Bokushu Ochiai."
It was another name my father used as a philosopher.
On the front and back covers of that book, a picture of a baby was drawn.
It was a picture my mother drew of me, just after I was born.
A man who was an artillery elite, a philosopher, a businessman, and who supported his wife's art, released a book on cosmic philosophy the year after his son was born. His wife decorated the cover with a picture of their child.
I still have that book in my possession.
Final Chapter: The Voice of the Soul
—1,100 years, now, becomes a song
I was born after a long struggle.
My mother had a problem where her pelvis would not open, and my father had even decided on the name "Hirohito" for the first child, but that life was lost in my mother's womb.
However, my father did not give up.
Pouring in all his medicine, philosophy, and love, he carefully nurtured the next life—the cell that was me.
I hate war.
I wrote that in the prologue.
Even now, that feeling has not changed.
But now I have a deep conviction, different from when I wrote the prologue.
My father did not like war.
He went to the battlefield precisely because he loved peace.
He aimed for high status precisely because he did not want to let his subordinates die.
Refusing to participate in the February 26 Incident, walking through the darkness following the voice of God, helping people in China and being helped by them—everything was because he had an overwhelming will to live and to help others live.
My father, too, wished for love and peace more deeply than anyone else.
When I realized that, for the first time, I felt that my father and I were connected at a deep level.
The form of expression is different. My father faced the world with artillery formulas, philosophical words, and medical techniques, and I sing my soul with music and voice. However, the wish at the root is the same.
A world without conflict.
A place where the soul can shine freely.
An era where people can love one another.
The dance-like sword handling my father showed me in the bamboo grove.
In that silence was the origin of my soul's voice.
Only what is emitted from a pure heart, having cleared away evil thoughts, truly reaches the world.
Whether it is a sword or a voice, the essence is the same.
What the soul of 1,100 years has conveyed was not a sword or a cannon.
It was—a voice. It was the voice of the soul.
Starting from Emperor Uda, taking root in the land of Omi, surviving the warring states period, and crossing the torrents of the modern age—the soul of the Ochiai family has drifted here, having slipped through the jaws of death many times.
My grandfather Toshio and grandmother Ben passed away at the young age of 41 in the Great Kanto Earthquake.
But their son Gentaro supported his family by peddling fish, graduated at the top of his class from the military academy, faced 1,000 tanks for a week in the Nomonhan wilderness, walked through the darkness following the voice of God, helped people in China, swam back across the Genkai Sea, met his destined person at Dannoura, and released a philosophy book.
To that father, on September 2nd—the day after September 1st—I was born.
The night before I was born, my mother had a dream.
A dream of a large, five-fingered, golden-shining dragon ascending to heaven with a baby in its hand.
The next day, after a difficult birth that lasted from morning until 10:00 PM, I passed through the birth canal by my own will.
And the moment I was born, I screamed.
Pursing my lips like a hawk, turning bright red.
Even now, I remember that scream.
This was my first cry in this world.
To produce a voice—to vocalize—might be my mission.
That was the moment I felt that.
Eventually, at the end of my first year, when I was walking on a mountain path in Kita-Kamakura with my mother, a bush warbler sang.
At that voice, I was startled.
Is a voice something that resonates so beautifully?
It was the moment I, who only knew how to scream, first learned the beauty of "vocalization."
At night, my father would hold me in the breast of his gown and whisper philosophy into my ear.
I didn't understand the words yet.
However, my father's will was conveyed.
Perhaps language and will are things that are conveyed separately.
While my mother painted in her studio with classical music playing, before I knew it, I was holding chopsticks and conducting.
While Dvorak's "From the New World" was playing.
My mother laughed and said, "You're just like Karajan."
Voice and music were already dwelling in my whole body before I learned to speak.
From the moment I let out my first cry to the moment I trembled at the voice of the bush warbler—my journey to the "voice of the soul" had already begun from the day I was born.
I, who was born from the soul of the Ochiai family carrying the blood of the Uda Genji and the soul of the Kimura family carrying the blood of the Heike meeting at Dannoura and becoming one, am now making my voice resonate in this era.
The Genji and Heike have reconciled after 800 years, and their child is singing.
The name up to Gentaro is engraved on the great family tree of Sasaki Shrine. The one who should engrave the name next is me.
However, what I should engrave is not just a name.
It is to make that voice, which the soul of 1,100 years has conveyed, resonate to the fullest in this era.
Father.
You went to the battlefield for the sake of peace, and followed the voice of God as you walked through the darkness.
I continue to sing for the sake of peace.
Following the voice of my soul, I continue to walk through the darkness of this era.
The stillness with which you caught a wooden sword with chopsticks, the purity with which you carved a path through the bamboo grove, and the indomitable spirit with which you stood unmoved before a thousand tanks—all live on within my voice even now.
As one who has received the baton of life spanning 1100 years,
I will make this voice resonate through this era with all my might.
For that is my mission, as the 40th generation of the Ochiai family.
The river that has flowed since the Heian period continues to flow today.
I will continue to sing the voice of that river.
*This work has been shortened for submission to the Creative Awards.
The complete version will be released again after the Creative Awards conclude.
#CreativeAwards2026 #EssayCategory