Nakamura family

• Japanese: 中村家 (Nakamura ke)

The Nakamura family of Tomonoura were prominent Edo period merchants, brewers, and local officials. Known for their homeishu (a type of medicinal liquor), the Nakamura family held a variety of local government posts in the Inland Sea (Fukuyama domain) port-town of Tomonoura, as well as operating the town's honjin (official lodging for shogunal & foreign envoys, daimyô, and other elite guests).

According to a section on the family's own lineage, written by family head Nakamura Toshi'emon Toshimasa (aka Toshi'emon II) in 1701, the Nakamura family claims descent from Tsuji Toshinaga, a retainer of Imagawa Yoshimoto who died at the battle of Okehazama, via Toshinaga's descendant Tsuji Toshiyoshi (aka Kansuke). A later descendant, Wakatarô, took on his mother's surname, Nakamura, becoming Nakamura Jôhei Toshitoki. He was active as a physician in Osaka, but his son Yoshinaga took on commercial activities. In 1653, the family home was destroyed by flood, and two years later, in 1655/11, at the age of 23, Yoshinaga relocated to Tomonoura, with the help of an intellectual named Bankoya Rokurôzaemon who allowed him to rent rooms in his home. A few years later, in 1658/3, Yoshinaga moved out of Bankoya's home, rented a house of his own, and found a wife. The following year, making use of medicinal techniques he learned from his father, he began an enterprise brewing a medicinal liquor; this would later come to be called homeishu.

In 1671/6, at the age of 39, Yoshinaga obtained his own residence facing the sea for the first time. He initially called it the Osaka-ya, a name which remained in use until 1704. At the same time, the home & business was often called simply Homeishu-ya ("Homeishu Shop"). Yoshinaga received a formal authorization (kabu) in 1673 from Fukuyama han designating him a recognized saké brewer & merchant. The family were named goyô shônin (official purveyors of products, in this case liquor, to the domain) in 1685.

Once established in the town, the Nakamura family quickly became quite prominent in local affairs; members of the Nakamura family held a wide variety of local governmental or administrative posts in Tomonoura over the course of the Edo period, including Town Elders (shukurô), operators of the town's official honjin (inn for elite guests, e.g. foreign & shogunal envoys, visiting daimyo), overseer of ships (funaza), and overseer of finances (ginza), among others. The homeishu became quite famous and prized, with not only daimyô (who often passed through Tomo on their way to and from Edo), but also Dutch and Ryukyuan embassies regularly placing orders for significant amounts to purchase and take home with them.

Yoshinaga retired in 1701, passing on headship of the family to his adopted heir (by birth, a son of Yoshinaga's younger sister) Nakamura Toshiemon Toshimasa. In 1709, the family began to face competition from local producers of Araki-shu (another local liquor), and Toshimasa petitioned the domain's Magistrate of Liquor (saké bugyô) to halt the sale of Araki-shu. The following year, in 1710/11, the Magistrate issued an order granting the Nakamura establishment a monopoly on "famous [local] liquors" (meishu); the domain also stopped the import of any products resembling homeishu from outside of the domain.

By 1732, the Nakamura shop is known to have been producing not only homeishu, but also plum wine (umeshu), chrysanthemum wine, nintôshu, and yôkishu (another medicinal product), among several other varieties. Meanwhile, Toshimasa also incrementally expanded the family's property over the course of the 1710s-1720s; significant portions of this property would double as the town's honjin, hosting sizable parties of foreign envoys and other notable elite guests.

References

• Aono Shunsui 青野春水, "Kaidai" 解題, in Harada Tomohiko 原田伴彦 (ed.), Nihon toshi seikatsu shiryô shûsei 7 (Minato machi hen II) 日本都市生活史料集成７　（港町編II）, Tokyo: Gakushû kenkyûsha sha (1976), 25-27.