A samurai of Satsuma Domain prior to the Meiji Restoration, he played a role in opposing radical elements among his fellows, though he may also have been responsible for the killing of the Englishman Richardson in the 1862 Namamugi Incident, which led to the bombardment of Kagoshima and proved damaging to the Tokugawa shogunate.

In the so-called Namamugi Incident, an Englishman named Richardson was killed, and two men accompanying him seriously wounded, when they failed to dismount and step aside for a group of Satsuma samurai coming the other way down the road.

Meeting with officials at Shuri, Narahara and Ijichi discussed a number of matters including matters of the kingdom's debts and tax obligations to Kagoshima, exploitation of coal deposits recently discovered on the Yaeyama Islands, and the need for the king of Ryukyu to formally pay his respects to the Emperor of Japan, thus symbolically acknowledging his subordination and that of his kingdom to the Empire of Japan.

[1][5] His term is marked by the end of the "policy of preserving the old customs" (旧慣温存, kyūkan onzon) in Okinawa, or the "'Do Nothing' Era" as historian George H. Kerr dubs it;[6] up until this point, Tokyo's policies towards Okinawa largely focused on maintaining old customs and administrative forms so as to appease local discontent, encourage pro-Japanese attitudes, and avoid feeding pro-Chinese attitudes.

[7] Under Narahara, this era of maintenance of the old ways came to an end, and Westernization and modernization efforts which had already been underway in the rest of Japan for several decades began to be undertaken in Okinawa.

[8]" Even so, despite extensive reforms and modernization efforts, the prefecture's economic and political situation vis-a-vis Tokyo could be said to have more closely resembled that of a colony than that of an integral part of the home country.