Born as the youngest son into the Mikawa collateral branch of Tokugawa, Nagai was adopted into a hatamoto family and went on to have a well-rounded career and held a variety of key positions within both the Bakufu and Meiji governments. Nagai’s professional positions included being a Confucian teacher and scholar at the Kitenkan Academy in Kofu, a ship captain, an industrialist who built shipyards in Nagasaki, an author and towards the end of his life, a real estate agent. His talents were noticed by the Bakufu and served as a police magistrate in tumultuous Kyoto during the early to mid-1860s. Later, he reached the position of Inspector General of the Bakufu serving Tokugawa Yoshinobu. As the Bakufu forces were systematically being pushed back by the Imperialists, Nagai retreated to Hokkaido with other pro-Shogunal die-hards and was elected magistrate of Hakodate upon the formation of the short-lived Ezo Republic. After the cessation of hostilities, Nagai was rehabilitated and called back into government service where he eventually rose to the post of genro-in.
References
- Hillsborough, Romulus. Shinsengumi: The Shogun's Last Samurai Corps, Tuttle Publishing, 2005
- Jansen, Marius B. Sakamoto Ryoma and the Meiji Restoration. Columbia University Press, 1994.