History
Nara Station opened on 27 December 1890 as a general station when the Osaka Railway (first incarnation) extended its line between Ōji and Nara. On 18 April 1896 the Nara Railway opened a line between Kizu and Nara. The Kansai Railway opened a line between Daibutsu and Nara on 21 May 1899, and Nara Railway extended from Kyōtaba to Nara on 14 October 1899. The Osaka Railway merged into the Kansai Railway on 6 June 1900, and the Nara Railway followed on 7 February 1905, making the station fully Kansai-Railway-operated. The Kamo–Daibutsu–Nara segment of the Kansai Railway was abolished on 21 August 1907, and on 1 October 1907 the Kansai Railway was nationalised. The track-name decree of 12 October 1909 classified the Kizu and Ōji lines as the Kansai Main Line and the Kyōtaba line as the Sakurai Line. A second-generation temple-style station building was completed on 11 September 1934. The station was damaged in air raids on 22 July 1945. The Midori-no-Madoguchi reserved-ticket office opened in October 1965. Freight and parcel handling ended on 1 February 1984, leaving only passenger service. With the privatisation of JNR on 1 April 1987 the station passed to JR West, and station illumination began on 31 July 1987. The "Yamatoji Line" nickname for the Kansai Main Line was adopted on 13 March 1988. Automatic ticket gates went into service on 8 August 1998, and ICOCA on 1 November 2003. The station moved to a temporary building on 7 September 2003 for elevation works, and on 11 May 2004 the second-generation building was relocated 18 metres using the hikiya house-moving method to preserve it. The Kansai Main Line platforms were elevated on 29 June 2008, the Osaka Loop / Yamatoji Line management system was introduced on 4 October 2009, and the Sakurai Line platforms were elevated on 13 March 2010, when the "Man'yō Mahoroba Line" nickname was adopted between Nara and Takada. An east–west free passage opened on 3 October 2010, and the continuous elevation project as a whole finished in March 2013. Station numbering was introduced on 17 March 2018. From the timetable revision of 16 March 2024 Nara became a stop for the new "RakuRaku Yamato" commuter limited express, and from 15 March 2025 a stop for the now-regular "Mahoroba" limited express.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-22.
Notes
The second-generation station building of 1934, designed in a syncretic Japanese-Western style with a sōrin finial atop its hōgyō hipped roof, was originally the rejected entry for the design competition for the Kyōto Imperial Museum and was reused here. When the line was elevated, conservationists' objections kept the building intact: it was moved 18 metres by the hikiya house-moving method on 11 May 2004 and has been used as Nara City General Tourist Information Office since 2009. It was designated a Modernization Industrial Heritage in 2007 and a JSCE Civil Engineering Heritage in 2011.