While a student at Tokyo University, he began writing short stories, and he also fell in love with the poet Kitabatake Yao.

His wife soon found out about the affair, and Fukada quickly enlisted in the Imperial Japanese Army, asking for an immediate transfer to the front lines war-time China to avoid the potentially more dangerous conflict at home; he served for the next three years in front-line combat units from Qingdao to Nanjing.

At the end of the war, Fukada was demobilized, and returned to Japan in 1946, but he avoided a reunion with his wife and went back to Shigeko, whom he married as soon as his divorce was finalized.

From 1959 to 1963, he wrote Nihon Hyakumeizan (100 Famous Japanese Mountains), which was an immediate hit, and which won the 16th Yomiuri Prize.

In 1966, and again in 1969–1970, he made long journeys in Central Asia of China and the Soviet Union, exploring the mountains of the Silk Road.