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Q.Is it true that almost everyone in Nara lives in the north, and the rest is mountains?

Published 2026-06-10

Answer

Essentially true. Over 90% of the prefecture's 1.27 million people live around the Nara Basin in the northwest, and about 77% of the land is forest. Yoshino District — roughly 56% of the prefecture's area — is home to just 34,000 people, under 3% of the population.

The numbers are more extreme than you'd think

Nara Prefecture has about 1.27 million residents (1,267,857 as of May 2026, prefectural estimate). More than 90% of them live around the Nara Basin in the northwestern corner — home to every major city including Nara, Kashihara, Ikoma and Yamatokōriyama. In fact, Nara has the lowest ratio of habitable land of any prefecture in Japan; the flat land people can live on is itself concentrated in the northwest.

1.27MPopulation

90%+live around the Nara Basin

~77%of the land is forest

The southern half is almost entirely mountains

Yoshino District in the south (3 towns and 8 villages) covers about 2,055 km² — roughly 56% of the prefecture's 3,691 km². Its population is about 34,000 (April 2025, resident register), less than 3% of the prefectural total. Totsukawa is Japan's largest village at 672.38 km² — bigger than Tokyo's 23 wards or Lake Biwa — yet 96% of it is forested mountains. The deep Kii Mountain Range blankets the entire southern half of the prefecture.

~56%of the land is Yoshino District

34,000people live there (<3%)

672 km²Totsukawa, Japan's largest village

What does this mean for tourism?

This north–south divide shapes tourism too. Plot the national land-survey data on tourism resources and lodging capacity, and you can see at a glance that both attractions and accommodation cluster in the north. The south, meanwhile, holds Yoshinoyama's cherry blossoms and the Ōmine Okugakemichi pilgrimage route — the World Heritage 'Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range'. The north is day-trip territory reachable by train; the south is a place for longer journeys into the mountains. One prefecture, two completely different kinds of destination.

Datasets behind this article

Sources