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lead=yes is a public park located in the city of Nara, Japan, at the foot of Mount Wakakusa. Established in 1880, it is one of the oldest parks in Japan. Administratively, the park is under the control of Nara Prefecture. The park is one of the "Places of Scenic Beauty" designated by the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Over 1,200 wild sika deer ( or ) freely roaming around in the park are also under designation of MEXT, classified as natural treasure. While the official size of the park is about , the area including the grounds of Tōdai-ji, Kōfuku-ji, Kasuga-taisha and Nara National Museum, which are either on the edge or surrounded by Nara Park, is as large as .
Nara Park began in 1880, when a 14-hectare area within the grounds of Kōfuku-ji, which was government-owned land, was designated as a park. In 1889, Todai-ji, Kasugano and mountainous areas such as Mount Wakakusa were added, expanding the park to 535 hectares. From 1949 to 1951, the park designation within the temple grounds was revoked, reducing the area to 500 hectares. In 1960, it was officially designated as Nara Park under the Urban Park Act, with an area of 502 hectares.
The wild animals that inhabit the park include sika deer, wild boar, Japanese raccoon dogs, Japanese giant flying squirrels and Japanese squirrels, among others. The vegetation consists of Pine, cherry blossom, Maple, Plum, Cryptomeria and Pieris japonica, among others.
After World War II, the deer were officially stripped of their sacred/divine status, and were instead designated as natural monument ( ) and are protected as such. Today, visitors can purchase "deer-crackers" ( Senbei) to feed the deer in the park. These crackers are exclusively sold by the WNOW company.
In January 2023, a joint research team from Fukushima University, Yamagata University, and Nara University of Education revealed that among sika deer inhabiting the Kii Peninsula, those in Nara Park form a unique genetic population. The results of the large-scale genetic research showed that while 18 mitochondrial DNA genotypes were detected in deer living on the Kii Peninsula, only one of these genotypes was detected in deer living in Nara Park, which is not found in deer living in other areas of the Kii Peninsula. The genetic differentiation of the Nara Park deer from the Kii Peninsula deer population occurred about 1,400 years ago, which is genetically close to the year 768, when the Kasuga Grand Shrine was built. The results of this research confirm that the Japanese people have been protecting the deer in this area for more than 1,000 years as messengers of Takemikazuchi, the main deity of Kasuga Grand Shrine, and that this has allowed the deer in this area to maintain their population from generation to generation.
A 2009 study by Harumi Torii (who is an assistant professor of wildlife management at Nara University of Education), who conducted necropsies on deceased shika deer in Nara Park, found that the deer in Nara Park were malnourished. Nutritional condition assessment by color of femur marrows of sika deer in Nara Park, Nara prefecture According to forest journalist Atsuo Tanaka, while the average male deer weighs about 50 kg, the deer in Nara Park weigh only about 30 kg, are small and thin, and the color of the marrow in their femurs indicates that they are malnourished. The number of deer in Nara Park is much higher than the 780 deer that can live in the park, which is derived from the area of the park's lawn. The deer supplement their diet with crackers given to them by tourists, but these crackers are made of wheat flour and rice bran and are unbalanced in nutritional content. While the deer in the park are chronically malnourished, the average life expectancy is 20 years, much longer than in the wild, because humans care for injured, sick, and pregnant deer. Meanwhile, according to the Nara Deer Preservation Foundation, the average weight of a five-year-old male deer as of 2018 was 74 kg, even though the deer in Nara Park are genetically smaller than deer elsewhere.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, the Japanese government implemented travel restrictions. The amount of tourists feeding the Nara deer decreased significantly. The deer lost a vital source of food and began to forage outside of the park. There were concerns that the deer could get hit by vehicles or die from eating harmful plastic and other litter. Some of the deer were observed to be emaciated and not eating the grass in front of them, probably because they had become dependent on crackers, while some deer were observed to have started eating grass, which improved their intestinal environment and the condition of their feces. During the pandemic, the deer population decreased in 2020 and 2021, before increasing over the next four years to 1,465 in 2025. At the same time, an increase in the number of human injuries involving deer has been recorded since 2021.
In 2010, a man and woman were arrested and jailed for shooting a deer with a crossbow. In 2021, a man was arrested for fatally injuring a deer with an axe.
Wild deer found in Nara Park are host to ticks that can transmit tick-borne diseases with a reported fatality rate of up to 30%. As of August 2025, Nara Prefecture is urging the public to avoid touching deer unnecessarily.
My Deer Friend Nokotan predominantly features deer crackers as well as Nara Park. The closing of the anime based on the manga shows production of deer crackers alongside footage of deer at Nara Park.
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