If you ever visit Nara Park, you will encounter these deer everywhere. They are wild deer but you are able to buy deer crackers (鹿煎餅 Shika-senbei) to feed them from little booths or at tables around the park. You are asked not to feed them anything else.
"According to local folklore, deer from this area were considered sacred due to a visit from one of the four gods of Kasuga Shrine, Takemikazuchi-no-mikoto.[2] He was said to have been invited from Kashima, Ibaraki,[3] and appeared on Mt. Mikasa-yama riding a white deer. From that point, the deer were considered divine and sacred by both Kasuga Shrine and Kōfuku-ji.[3] Killing one of these sacred deer was a capital offense punishable by death up until 1637, the last recorded date of a breach of that law.[3]
After World War II, the deer were officially stripped of their sacred/divine status,[3] and were instead designated as National Treasures and are protected as such."
(Taken directly from Wikipedia)
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