was a Japanese

Japanese people

The are an ethnic group originating in the Japanese archipelago and are the predominant ethnic group of Japan. Worldwide, approximately 130 million people are of Japanese descent; of these, approximately 127 million are residents of Japan. People of Japanese ancestry who live in other countries...

 writer who lived during the late Edo Period

Edo period

The , or , is a division of Japanese history which was ruled by the shoguns of the Tokugawa family, running from 1603 to 1868. The political entity of this period was the Tokugawa shogunate....

 and early Meiji Era. Writing under the pen name of Kōtei, his given name was Kiyoshi (淑). He was the second son of Sone Nao (曾根 直), and his patrilineality root was the Kai-Genji clan (甲斐源氏).

Biography

Nakane was born in Edo

Edo

, also romanized as Yedo or Yeddo, is the former name of the Japanese capital Tokyo, and was the seat of power for the Tokugawa shogunate which ruled Japan from 1603 to 1868...

 (江戸), and was adopted

Adoption

Adoption is a process whereby a person assumes the parenting for another and, in so doing, permanently transfers all rights and responsibilities from the original parent or parents...

 and brought up by the Nakane-House (中根) from childhood. His adoptive parents treated him as a real son and he served them faithfully. Nakane liked Japanese martial arts

Japanese martial arts

Japanese martial arts refers to the enormous variety of martial arts native to Japan. At least three Japanese terms are often used interchangeably with the English phrase "Japanese martial arts": , literally meaning "martial way", , which has no perfect translation but means something like science,...

 and read many books, however he had no formal teacher

Teacher

A teacher or schoolteacher is a person who provides education for pupils and students . The role of teacher is often formal and ongoing, carried out at a school or other place of formal education. In many countries, a person who wishes to become a teacher must first obtain specified professional...

.

Military service

Nakane served Edo Bakufu as a kachi-metsuke (徒士目), an infantry

Infantry

Infantrymen are soldiers who are specifically trained for the role of fighting on foot to engage the enemy face to face and have historically borne the brunt of the casualties of combat in wars. As the oldest branch of combat arms, they are the backbone of armies...

 officer

Officer (armed forces)

An officer is a member of an armed force or uniformed service who holds a position of authority. Commissioned officers derive authority directly from a sovereign power and, as such, hold a commission charging them with the duties and responsibilities of a specific office or position...

, and became an infantry commandant

Commandant

Commandant is a senior title often given to the officer in charge of a large training establishment or academy. This usage is common in anglophone nations...

 in the last days of the Edo period. After the Meiji Restoration

Meiji Restoration

The , also known as the Meiji Ishin, Revolution, Reform or Renewal, was a chain of events that restored imperial rule to Japan in 1868...

, Nakane followed Tokugawa Yoshinobu

Tokugawa Yoshinobu

was the 15th and last shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan. He was part of a movement which aimed to reform the aging shogunate, but was ultimately unsuccessful...

 to Suruga (駿河, now Shizuoka prefecture

Shizuoka Prefecture

is a prefecture of Japan located in the Chūbu region on Honshu island. The capital is the city of Shizuoka.- History :Shizuoka prefecture was formed from the former Tōtōmi, Suruga and Izu provinces.The area was the home of the first Tokugawa Shogun...

), and worked there at the Numazu

Numazu, Shizuoka

is a city located in eastern Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. As of 2009, the city has an estimated population of 205,636 and a population density of 1,100 persons per km². The total area was 187.11 km².- Geography:...

 Military Academy (沼津兵学校).

In 1873, Nakane was called to the Staff Bureau of Military (陸軍参謀局), and served as a major

Major

Major is a rank of commissioned officer, with corresponding ranks existing in almost every military in the world.When used unhyphenated, in conjunction with no other indicator of rank, the term refers to the rank just senior to that of an Army captain and just below the rank of lieutenant colonel. ...

. In the winter of 1876, he contracted a disease, and became incapable of performing any further physical hard labour. Due to this he resigned his post, and lived in Tokyo

Tokyo

, ; officially , is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. Tokyo is the capital of Japan, the center of the Greater Tokyo Area, and the largest metropolitan area of Japan. It is the seat of the Japanese government and the Imperial Palace, and the home of the Japanese Imperial Family...

 for the next five or six years. He was eventually appointed as a sonin-hensankan (奏任編纂官), or "compilation government service" in the Ministry of Education, but resigned several years later. At this point Nakane's life in the public services

Public services

Public services is a term usually used to mean services provided by government to its citizens, either directly or by financing private provision of services. The term is associated with a social consensus that certain services should be available to all, regardless of income...

 had ended, and he thereafter followed his literary

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

 pursuits.

Literature

In about 1885, Nakane was offered a position by the publisher

Publishing

Publishing is the process of production and dissemination of literature or information—the activity of making information available to the general public...

 Kinkōdō (金港堂) to work as the chief editor and he accepted. Whilst in this position Nakane published many novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

s written by a younger generation of authors, for example works from Futabatei Shimei

Futabatei Shimei

was a Japanese author, translator, and literary critic. Born Hasegawa Tatsunosuke in Edo , Futabatei's works are in the realist style popular in the mid- to late-19th century...

 (二葉 亭四迷) and Kōda Rohan

Koda Rohan

who used the pen name was a Japanese author in the Meiji period. His daughter, Aya Kōda, was also a noted author who often wrote about him.Kōda wrote "The Icon of Liberty", also known as "The Buddha of Art" or "The Elegant Buddha", in 1889. A house in which Kōda lived was rebuilt in 1972 by the...

 (幸田 露伴).

Death

After the deaths of his wife and son, Nakane believed that fate

Destiny

Destiny or fate refers to a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual...

 was trying to destroy the pedigree of his families, and felt that he should not act against that fate. Nakane never remarried, gave up his house, and roamed from place to place. In his last days, he lived in Okotsu (興津), Shizuoka. Nakane died in 1913 at 75 years of age, and his ashes

Cremation

Cremation is the process of reducing bodies to basic chemical compounds such as gasses and bone fragments. This is accomplished through high-temperature burning, vaporization and oxidation....

 were scattered as requested in his will

Will (law)

A will or testament is a legal declaration by which a person, the testator, names one or more persons to manage his/her estate and provides for the transfer of his/her property at death...

.

Notable works

Nakane is noted for writing an excellent essay

Essay

An essay is a piece of writing which is often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition...

 and short biographies

Biography

A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...

. Nakane is not well known today, even in his native Japan, as he wrote using the old Japanese style of prose, or Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese

Classical Chinese or Literary Chinese is a traditional style of written Chinese based on the grammar and vocabulary of ancient Chinese, making it different from any modern spoken form of Chinese...

. While Nakane did not write as a profession, his historical

History

History is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...

 investigations were nonetheless skilfully authored. Possessing wide interests and a deep culture, Nakane's writings covered the history of Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 and China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, including their literature. Mori Senzō (森 銑三), an expert on old Japanese literature, remarked that the works of Nakane have the character of a noble Samurai

Samurai

is the term for the military nobility of pre-industrial Japan. According to translator William Scott Wilson: "In Chinese, the character 侍 was originally a verb meaning to wait upon or accompany a person in the upper ranks of society, and this is also true of the original term in Japanese, saburau...

.

Nakane's best known works include:

• Kōtei Gadan (香亭雅談), 1886
• Kōtei Zousou (香亭蔵草), 1913
• Kōtei Ibun (香亭遺文), 1916

See also

• Japanese literature
  Japanese literature
  Early works of Japanese literature were heavily influenced by cultural contact with China and Chinese literature, often written in Classical Chinese. Indian literature also had an influence through the diffusion of Buddhism in Japan...
  
  
• Biographers