Hansuke Nakamura

He started his training under Ryōi Shintō-ryū master Saizo Shimosaka, and eventually known as a fearsome fighter not only due to his skill, but also to his large size for a Japanese man of his time, being 1,76m tall.

[2] Through the years Nakamura, his training partner Shogo Uehara and the Sekiguchi-ryū artists Tetsutaro Hisatomi and Danzo Naka were known as the four strongest jujutsu fighters in Kurume, reaching fame throughout the entire nation.

[1] When the Meiji Restoration caused the Nakamura clan to be dissolved in 1868, Hansuke became a fisherman and a sake brewer in order to make a living, yet he didn't stop practicing his art.

He shared duties with Uehara, Hisatomi, Samura and Matsugoro Okuda, creating along them a special program to select aspiring policemen by their physical skills.

[3] In 1886, with the rise of Jigoro Kano and his Kodokan institute, Nakamura sided against them in behalf of Hikosuke Totsuka's Yōshin-ryū, the country's main jujutsu school.

The judoka followed with an ouchi gari, which Nakamura blocked, and a hiza guruma, which seemed successful, but the jujutsuka pulled Tomita to the ground and tried to pin him with kami-shiho-gatame.

[2] His chance came during the Metropolitan Police Department Martial Arts Tournaments (警視庁武術大会, Keishicho Bujutsu Taikai), where teams from the Kodokan faced fighters from the Totsuka school.

In total, they fought half an hour standing and 25 minutes on the ground, and they were rendered so tired that the referee had to forcefully pry their numb fingers apart to separate them when the match ended.

[7] Nakamura died in 1897 at 52 years old, but he was immortalized by a character of Tsuneo Tomita's Sanshiro Sugata novel series, Hansuke Murai, who was directly based on him.