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Gion Nakamura-rō, picture postcard (n.d.). Personal collection
Review of Nakamura-rō, in Kyoto City Council, Kyōto, Japan (1903)
In 1868, immediately after the Meiji Restoration, the Niken-jaya (二軒茶屋) tea house inside the Yasaka shrine precincts built a new two-storey structure with Japanese-style and Western-style rooms that went by the name Nakamura-rō (or, sometimes, Nakamura-ya).
The continuation of treaty restrictions meant that the proprietors had to wait a few years for the expected influx of foreigners to Kyoto, but from 1872 the Nakamura-rō soon established itself as one of the main hostelries and restaurants serving foreign tourists in the early Meiji period. There was some confusion over how to categorize it, however: the Murray’s Handbook put it under “Hotels” in 1894, while the 1903 edition introduced it as a “semi-Europ.” Japanese inn.
"It was quite dark when we entered Kioto, where I stopped at an inn, which, though it provided an elaborate cuisine, had the Japanese characteristics of wooden walls and sliding panels, which, as the weather was cold, were not conducive to comfort. Moreover, though they professed to speak English, it was of the most meagre description. The people warm themselves over small charcoal hand stoves […] though they were very civil and obliging at the ‘Nakamuraya Higashi Nikonchaya [sic.], adjoining the Gien Temple” (I quote the description given on the card, whatever the Japanese words may mean), yet they spoke too little English to make my stay pleasant.”
Robert Nicholas Fowler, A Visit to Japan, China, and India (London: S. Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1877), 47–52
Records from 1895 list the Nakamura-rō with “10 large rooms in Japanese style [and] 6 or 7 in foreign style” (The City Council of Kyoto 1895, 4). By 1914, these had been reduced to 3 European (at 5 to 6 yen) and 9 Japanese (from 3 yen).
Although the Nakamura-rō continued to be listed in English-language guidebooks until 1941, it was soon overshadowed by other, more prominent western-style hotels in the Higashiyama area such as the Yaami and Miyako.
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