Json: PHP to JavaScript safe or not?

I understand that the use of eval(json_str) on the client is vulnerable to malicious code. My question is, if json_str was an array constructed by the PHP function json_encode, would I be safe?

For example,

json_str = json_encode(array(record1, 
                             record2, 
                             record3));

would it now be entirely safe to use eval(json_str) inside client-side code?