History
Tanakura Station opened on 13 March 1896 as part of the Nara Railway when the line was extended from Tamamizu to Kizu; the name came from the contemporaneous village of Tanakura. Nara Railway merged with Kansai Railway in February 1905, and Kansai Railway was nationalized in October 1907. The station joined the Nara Line under the railway-name regulations of October 1909. Freight and parcel handling ended in 1972, full staffing ended in October 1984, and the station passed to JR West with the dissolution of JNR in April 1987. Automatic gates arrived in 1999, ICOCA in 2003, station number JR-D17 in March 2018, and single-track running through the station took effect on 28 October 2018.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
The Tsubai Ōtsukayama tumulus group, exposed during construction of the Nara Line tracks, sits 3 km from the station and yielded triangular bronze mirrors of a type associated with Queen Himiko's Yamatai-koku.