History
Yanagimoto Station opened on 11 May 1898 as part of the Nara Railway's Kyōbate-to-Sakurai line. It passed to Kansai Railway in 1905, was nationalised in 1907, and was assigned to the Sakurai Line under the line-name rules of 1909. The current wooden station building, distinguished by its namako-kabe (sea-cucumber-style) lattice plaster, was completed in 1930 and still stands today. The 1987 break-up of Japanese National Railways placed the station under JR West, ICOCA contactless ticketing was introduced on 1 March 2005, and on 13 March 2010 the Sakurai Line was officially nicknamed the Man'yō Mahoroba Line. JR West donated the station building to Tenri City in November 2018; in April 2019 it reopened as a multi-purpose facility containing a café and retail space.
History summarized from Japanese & English Wikipedia · last reviewed 2026-05-18.
Notes
Across the street from Yanagimoto lies the Kurozuka Kofun keyhole-tomb, where excavators uncovered more than thirty triangular-rimmed sacred-beast mirrors in a single chamber — one of the candidate burial sites associated with Queen Himiko of Yamatai.