He won the Ina Nobuo Award in 1986 and had a major retrospective at the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography in 2000.
He was recruited by Natori Yōnosuke for Weekly Sun News (週刊サンニュース, Shūkan San Nyūsu); and in 1949 moved to Iwanami Shoten where, again under Natori, he did the photography for about fifty of the slim volumes in Iwanami Shashin Bunko.
During the 1960s Nagano observed the period of intense economic growth in Japan, depicting the lives of Tokyo's sarariman with some humor.
The photographs of this period were only published in book form much later, as Dorīmu eiji and 1960 (1978 and 1990 respectively).
Nagano exhibited recent examples of his street photography in 1986, winning the Ina Nobuo Award.