Tachikawa vs. Central Tokyo: Why the West Side Wins on Space and Sky

Why do Tachikawa people apologise for not living in the 23 wards? Tokyo’s own statistics say: three times the park space per head, and Mt Fuji 23 km closer.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

“I’m heading into Tokyo.”

That is what a reporter at a newspaper bureau in Tachikawa (立川) says, according to a colleague, whenever he goes out to cover a story in the 23 wards of central Tokyo. In the autumn of 2025 a Yomiuri Shimbun journalist, a few months into his posting at the paper’s Tachikawa bureau, opened an article with that line. Then he added: but Tachikawa is in Tokyo too.

I laughed when I read it, and then I went quiet. Anyone who lives in Tachikawa knows phrases like this. “Going up to Tokyo.” “Going into town.” The address on every envelope begins “Tokyo”, and yet the words that slip out of people’s mouths do not count their own city as inside it. “I live in Tachikawa. Well, it’s not one of the 23 wards.” I understand the urge to add that little footnote even when nobody asked.

A word of context for readers from abroad. Tokyo is not a single city but a prefecture-sized metropolis. Its eastern core is divided into 23 special wards, the Tokyo most visitors know: Shinjuku, Shibuya, Ginza. West of the wards lies the Tama area, a long band of cities, towns and finally mountains. Tachikawa is one of its main cities, about 37.5 km by rail west of Tokyo Station.

So why do Tachikawa people keep saying “we’re not in the 23 wards”? Where does this sense of being second best come from? And does it survive contact with the numbers?

This series has already walked Tachikawa’s parks and rivers, its airfield past and the shops that came here first in all of Tokyo. This time I asked a slightly mischievous question and opened the statistical tables published by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government itself. Line up Tachikawa and the 23 wards on the same ruler: what do you see? Let me say at the start that I have no intention of running the wards down. The wards have their own strengths. I simply wanted to count what Tachikawa has that the city centre does not.

“Not in the 23 wards”: Santama, Toka and the 042 area code

To find where a feeling of inferiority comes from, start with names. People learn who they are from what they are called.

According to the Japanese Wikipedia entry on the Tama area, the western half of Tokyo, Tachikawa included, goes by several names: the Tama area, the Tama district, Santama (三多摩, “the three Tamas”), and sometimes Toka (都下). Santama comes from history. The old Tama District of Musashi Province was split into four in the early Meiji era (late 19th century), and the Tama area is made up mainly of three of them: North, South and West Tama. Tachikawa was a village in North Tama. Until 1893 those three districts belonged not to Tokyo but to Kanagawa Prefecture, the prefecture of Yokohama. That year they were transferred to Tokyo Prefecture.

Another article in this series tells that story in full, but one detail belongs here. According to Tachikawa Monogatari, the city’s local-history newsletter, a petition against the transfer was submitted in February 1893 while the Imperial Diet debated it. It was signed by every town and village head in South and West Tama, and by five heads from North Tama. One of the five was Inoue Zenjiro, head of Tachikawa Village. Many North Tama villages, on the other hand, supported the move, because the new Kobu Railway had tied them closely to Tokyo. The first name on the petition in favour was Sunagawa Gen’emon of Sunagawa Village. The two villages that now make up the city of Tachikawa stood on opposite sides. Far from longing for the 23 wards, the head of Tachikawa Village did not want to join Tokyo at all.

That Kobu Railway, today’s JR Chuo Line, opened between Shinjuku and Tachikawa in April 1889. Tachikawa was joined to Shinjuku by rail four years before it became part of Tokyo. Even so, it has always been counted as a place that “joined Tokyo later.”

Toka is a slippery word. Written out, it means “below the capital.” Read the city’s official chronology and you find, for 1965, “the first traffic counselling office in Toka opens in Tachikawa.” The supermarket chain Inageya writes that its self-service store at Tachikawa’s North Exit, opened in 1956, was the first supermarket in Toka. Even when recording something to be proud of, the city called itself “below.” I doubt the people who wrote that chronology meant any harm. It was simply how everyone spoke. Harmless words last longest.

There is a line in the phone book too. According to the same encyclopedia entry, most of Komae city and parts of Chofu and Mitaka share the 23 wards’ area code, 03. Most of the rest of the Tama area uses 042. Tachikawa is 042. One glance at the first three digits on a business card tells you whether someone is inside the wards or out. One radio show has turned that number into a banner: a Tama-born musician hosts a programme on TBS Radio, sponsored by a Tachikawa company, whose title includes “Tokyo 042” and promises to liven up Tama. The number of the outsider, painted on a flag.

The idea of a separate Tama Prefecture has come and gone since the Meiji era. The encyclopedia records that in 1895 the Home Ministry drafted a bill to create a Tokyo metropolis and a Tama Prefecture; it never passed. The Yomiuri article reports that a study group exploring Tama independence began work in 2020, and that by the analysis of one of its leading members, Tama’s total economic output would rank in the top ten if set among Japan’s prefectures, level with Chiba or Hokkaido. That is a very large collection of towns to be feeling second best.

Names alone could be shrugged off. But the feeling seems to have heavier roots. At one time the gap had a name of its own.

The era of the “Santama gap”

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s 2017 plan for promoting the Tama area is frank about the past.

In the high-growth decades of the 1950s and 1960s, it says, population exploded along the railway lines and towns urbanised fast. The Tama area grew from 1 million people in 1955 to 3 million in 1975. Three times as many people in twenty years. People came first; roads and sewers chased after them. Public services could not keep up, and people began to speak of a gap with the 23 wards in the convenience of daily life. The encyclopedia adds that the term “Santama gap” (三多摩格差) was coined because, from the moment the Tokyo Metropolis was created, roads and public facilities differed greatly between the wards and the Tama area.

In 1975 a council of the metropolitan government and Tama’s cities, towns and villages set “eight Santama gap issues.” From then on the two sides worked together to close them. They counted the gap into eight problems and set about clearing them away. Government work is dull, but it can be stubborn.

Back then, though, it would be unfair to describe Tachikawa only through that gap. As this series found in its article on the station, Tachikawa had ten cinemas in the 1960s. In 1956 the department store Isetan opened a reinforced-concrete store on the north side, with two lifts, still a rarity in the area, which became a talking point. In 1959 a rooftop restaurant opened on the top floor, and its view became famous. If you lived in Tama and wanted a film or a ride in a department-store lift, you came to Tachikawa. Even when roads and sewers could not keep pace with the population, the lights of Tokyo were shining in front of Tachikawa Station. Seen from the rest of Tama, the Tachikawa of the gap years was the nearest big city.

And now? The same plan says that by 2000 the eight issues had been largely resolved, which was the shared understanding of the metropolitan government and the municipalities at the time. From then on, Tokyo stopped trying to level Tama up to the wards across the board and turned to policies built on Tama’s own character.

On paper, then, the gap had largely done its job 26 years ago. The habit of speech stayed. In the Yomiuri article, the host of that “Tokyo 042” radio show says Tama has plenty of attractions, nature and history among them, but that its weakness is the residents’ “strong longing for the 23 wards.”

Did longing and inferiority outlive the gap itself? There is only one way to find out: put Tachikawa and the 23 wards side by side in the same official tables. The first one I opened was about parks.

Park space in Tachikawa: 9.08 m² per person, more than any of the 23 wards

Every year the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Bureau of Construction publishes a table of park area for every city, ward, town and village. I opened the table dated 1 April 2026, doubted my eyes once, and hit the calculator twice.

Tachikawa has 9.08 square metres of city park per resident. The 23 wards as a whole have 2.93. That makes Tachikawa about 3.1 times as generous. I checked the wards one by one: the most spacious, Edogawa ward, has 5.31. Tachikawa’s figure is bigger than that of any of the 23 wards. Parks also cover 6.97 percent of Tachikawa’s land, against 4.65 percent for the wards.

There is a trick, of course. About 63 percent of Tachikawa’s figure is the Tachikawa side of Showa Kinen Park (the Showa Memorial Park), a national government park, 107.8 hectares of it. Leave the national park out and the figure falls to 3.32 square metres per person. That is still a little more than the wards’ 2.93. Tachikawa is standing on the national government’s stilts, but take the stilts away and it is still not short.

Measure Showa Kinen Park with a 23-ward ruler. The whole park covers about 180 hectares. Shinjuku Gyoen, the famous garden in central Tokyo, is about 58.3 hectares. Nearly three Shinjuku Gyoens would fit into Showa Kinen Park. Imagine a holiday spent walking around three of them, starting from Nishi-Tachikawa Station, and you begin to feel faint. In the middle lies the Minna no Harappa (“everyone’s meadow”), about 400 metres north to south and 300 metres east to west. Lie on the grass and from one edge of your vision to the other there is nothing but sky.

Where did all this space come from? A Cabinet Office document records that in November 1977 the Tachikawa airfield was returned to Japan in full, and the state land handed back covered 453 hectares. The flat ground where aircraft once took off and landed became flat ground for people to nap on.

Space also shows in how crowded people are. The same table gives population density: 7,675 people per square kilometre in Tachikawa, 15,883 in the 23 wards. Tachikawa lives at roughly half the wards’ density. Anyone who knows the crowds outside Tachikawa Station may raise an eyebrow, but on paper each Tachikawa resident shares about twice as much elbow room. Admittedly, this is a hard number to remember on a packed train.

Parks are about the ground. But Tachikawa also has something above ground that the city centre lacks. It is easier to see if you look up.

The sky over Tachikawa, and Mt Fuji 23 km closer than Shinjuku

Many people say the sky over Tachikawa is big. It sounds like a mood, but some of it can be measured.

Start with sunshine. The Japan Meteorological Agency has no observation station inside Tachikawa, so I borrowed the nearest one, in Fuchu. On the 1991 to 2020 normals, Fuchu gets 1,986.2 hours of sunshine a year; the central Tokyo station gets 1,926.7. Fuchu has about 60 more hours of sun every year. Its sunniest month is January, at 201.3 hours. Winter in Tama is bright.

Next, building height. In a published conversation about the development of GREEN SPRINGS, the district built on former base land north of the station, one of those involved explains that Yokota Air Base and the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Tachikawa airfield are close by, so aviation law prevents tall buildings there. For the developers it was a handicap. For people on foot, it means the sky is left overhead. Not a sky cut into strips by skyscrapers, but one that comes down almost to the horizon. I suspect the big sky over Tachikawa is not only a feeling.

And then there is Mt Fuji.

Using map coordinates, I calculated the distance from Tachikawa Station to the summit of Mt Fuji: about 73 km. The same calculation from Shinjuku Station gives about 95 km. Tachikawa is about 23 km closer to Fuji than Shinjuku is. The railway from Tokyo Station to Tachikawa is 37.5 km, so Tachikawa people live some 60 percent of that distance nearer the mountain. Seen from Fuji’s side, Tachikawa is Tokyo’s front door.

The Kanto Regional Development Bureau of the national Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism lists 100 “views of Fuji” in the Kanto region, and the Tama River green space in Tachikawa is one of them. To the south-west, where the Tanzawa and Chichibu ranges collide, Fuji rises calmly behind them, the listing says, and it is seen best on clear winter days. In the south-west of the city there is even a district called Fujimi-cho, “Fuji-view town.” A local series on place names says the name comes from being able to see Fuji to the west from the edge of the river terrace.

Local writing says the same. A blog that has chronicled thousands of night walks around Tachikawa records a cold, clear evening after snow, when the writer climbed to the highest point of the walkway at Seibu-Tachikawa Station and saw a range of mountains spread sideways with Fuji’s head above it. You do not have to climb a mountain. A station walkway will do. That is how near Fuji feels in Tachikawa.

Around the winter solstice there is another show. According to the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan, the sun sets on the solstice at an azimuth of a little over 241 degrees. By my calculation, Fuji lies at about 239 degrees from Tachikawa. Around the solstice, seen from Tachikawa, the sun goes down in almost the same direction as Fuji. The Tama Monorail says that for about two and a half months around the winter solstice, “Diamond Fuji,” the sun setting exactly on the summit, can be seen from around Tama Center Station to Tachikawa-Minami Station. In Tachikawa, if the weather is clear, Fuji simply appears in the window of your commuter train. No ticket to an observation deck required.

Sky and Fuji are things you look up at. But where Tachikawa people gain the most is probably underfoot, on the station platform.