He dropped out after two months, but returned the following year as a student in the Department of French Literature, where his thesis was on the works of Guy de Maupassant.

His critical study of the novelist Futabatei Shimei, published as Futabatei Shimei ron in 1936, received high acclaim, winning the 1st Ikeya Shinzaburo award, which encouraged him to devote his energies into similar critiques of contemporary Japanese and Western writers, focusing on cultural comparisons.

In 1938 he went to study at the University of Paris on the invitation of the French Government, but was forced to return to Japan the following year at the outbreak of World War II.

After the war, Nakamura was briefly an instructor at the Kamakura Academy, before accepting a post as a professor at Meiji University in 1949. in 1950, Nakamura published Fuzoku Shosetsu Ron, in which he analyzed modern Japanese realism as expressed by Fumio Niwa and made a scathing attack against the I-Novel format which he criticized as being little more than thinly disguised autobiographies, lacking in any meaningful social commentary and removed from modern urban life and realities.

Nakamura continued to write stage plays, including Pari Hanjoki ("Prospering in Paris") and Kiteki Issei ("Starting Whistle"), and novels, including Waga Sei no Hakusho ("Confessions of My Sexuality"), Nise no Guzo ("False Idols"), and Aru Ai ("A Certain Love").