As a primary schooler, Nakahara had excellent grades and was called a prodigy child. It was the death of his younger brother Tsugurō in 1915, when he was 8-years-old, which awakened him to literature. Grief-driven, he turned to composing poetry. He submitted his first three verses to a women's magazine and local newspaper in 1920, when he was still in elementary school. In the same year, he passed the entrance examination to Yamaguchi Junior High School with brilliant results. It was from this point onwards when he started to rebel against his father's strictness. He no longer studied and his grades began to drop as he became increasingly absorbed by literature. Kensuke was extremely afraid of the influence of literature on his son. Once, having found a work of fiction Nakahara had hidden, he severely scolded him and, once again, confined him in the barn. It was around this time when Nakahara also began to drink and smoke, making his grades go even lower.