Nakayama Shinpei was one of the most influential composers in modern Japanese history. He was born in 1887 in what is now Nakano-shi, in the Northern part of Nagano prefecture. He was fourth of five boys, and had two sisters who died before he was born. His oldest brother died in 1893. Shinpei’s household was an old one, with important ties in what was then the village of Nomura, where they had set up household after moving from Gunma-ken in the Edo period. His father was the son of a village headman, but the Nakano family had limited ties to the entertainment world, as well – his grandfather’s older brother had given up his claim to the family headship, and moved to Edo (Tokyo) during the Edo period, where he became a tax collector in order to pay for his attempts to make connections and break into the entertainment world as a comedian.

Shinpei himself began studying music in his first year in elementary school, in 1894, where he began taking lessons on a miniature organ, learning to play the military marches of the era during the first year of the Sino-Japanese war. Shinpei has said that these songs had a profound influence upon his understanding of music.

(Nakayama, Urō. Nakayama Shimpei sakyoku kokuroku nenpu [中山晋平 作曲刻六年表]
(Nakayama Shimpei: A Chronology of a composer). 1980. pp. 287-8)