Nakamura was born on July 27, 1901, in Amoy, Fujian Province, China, the son of a Japanese diplomat.
[4] In 1925, he attended Tokyo University to study German literature, compelled by the works of Nietzsche, Hölderlin, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, and Strindberg.
Eventually, he returned to Tokyo University, changing his major to Japanese literature and writing his bachelor's thesis on the poet Shiki Masakoa.
Like many other poets, he eventually broke with Hototogisu and started his own magazine, Banryoku (萬緑, "Myriad Green Leaves"), in 1946.
He went on to write over a half dozen haiku collections, several volumes of essays and criticism, and short stories he referred to as märchen.