Jackson Deserialize Variable as Json String

Jackson issue 596 was created for the desired functionality described in the original question. Vote for it if you want it implemented.

The current solution available is to implement custom deserialization processing.

Also, the How can I include raw JSON in an object using Jackson? thread covers this topic.

I would rather suggest that you do let data be bound to an intermediate object; usually this is either java.util.Map or org.codehaus.jackson.JsonNode (JSON Tree). And then you can access data any way you want; including easily converting to a POJO using ObjectMapper.convertValue(inputPojo, outputType)).