[4] Her father Kunijiro was a major at Military Police who loved reading William Shakespeare in English,[5] and encouraged his daughter to study which was rather a rare attitude among parents in 1920s' Japan.
[8] At the time the definition of someone who could enter the modern legal profession in Japan was "a male Japanese national" who must be at least twenty years old.
[10] Nakata was one of the first three women, including Yoshiko Mibuchi and Ai Kume, to pass the bar exam in 1938 at her second challenge.
[3][11][12] All three of them were Meiji alumnae finishing its Women's College, who would become fully qualified lawyers after an eighteen-month internship in 1940.
[14] When Yoshio returned to his home in Tottori to rehabilitate, Nakata joined him in 1945 to evacuate from the air raides in Tokyo.