Nakamura-ke nikki
The Nakamura-ke nikki, or "Diary of the Nakamura Family," is a set of records maintained by the Nakamura family of the port-town of Tomonoura, who were both owner-operators of the town's chief honjin (elite lodgings) and purveyors of a local specialty liquor called homeishu.
The Diary, surviving in 26 volumes, covers a period from 1646 to 1866. However, there are frequently only a few tens of entries per year, skipping over a great many days (and events), and offering only a very few lines for those events that are mentioned. For example, a Ryukyuan embassy to Edo that passed through Tomonoura in 1790 is mentioned in two entries, very briefly summarizing that the mission arrived at Tomonoura in the evening on 10/13, and that Yoseyama peechin, a member of the mission, had died of illness, and was buried early in the morning (on 10/14) at Komatsu-ji in Tomonoura.[1] The Ryukyuan mission which passed through Tomonoura on the return from Edo in 1851 is mentioned briefly as well.[2] However, there are no entries for the dates when Ryukyuan missions would have passed through the town in 1796 or 1806.[3]
Nakamura Family History
According to a section on the family's own lineage, written by family head Nakamura 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 Yoshinaga and his family relocated to Tomonoura, with the help of an intellectual named Bankoya. A few years later, in 1659, Yoshinaga made use of medicinal techniques he learned from his father, and began brewing a medicinal liquor.
By 1685, the family business in medicinal liquors, including homeishu, was well underway, and in that year the Nakamura formally presented a number of bottles of liquor to the domain. Soon afterward, they became goyô shônin (official purveyors of products, in this case liquor, to the domain), as well as 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.
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.
- ↑ Shirarezaru Ryûkyû shisetsu 知られざる琉球使節, Fukuyama-shi Tomonoura rekishi minzoku shiryôkan (2006), 147.
- ↑ Aono Shunsui 青野春水、"Edo jidai Tomo machi no seiritsu to kôzô - chôsei o chûshin ni" 「江戸時代鞆町の成立と構造－町政を中心に－」、in Tomo no tsu Nakamura-ke monjo mokuroku IV 『鞆の津中村家文書目録 IV』, Fukuyama, Hiroshima: Fukuyama City Tomonoura Rekishi Minzoku Shiryôkan (2009), 253-255.; Shirarezaru Ryûkyû shisetsu, 44.
- ↑ 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), 400-401, 423.
