Tachikawa Travel Guide: Things to Do, Walks and History West of Tokyo

A first guide to Tachikawa, west Tokyo: who lives there, what to see, and four model walks, told through numbers, an old airfield and ten traveller questions.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

The city of Tachikawa (立川) has one National Treasure, a place where you can touch Antarctic ice for free, a sandy beach although it has no sea, and a single “mountain” about ten metres high that the city itself calls the only one in Tachikawa.

Tell people this and most will not believe you. I suspect more people pass through Tachikawa than ever get off there. For a long time I thought so too. Ride the JR Chuo Line west out of Shinjuku and, after a while, a cluster of tall buildings rises beside the track, the concrete beams of a monorail cross overhead, and then the city sinks low again. A station for changing trains. A station for meetings. A station on the way to somewhere else. The name Tachikawa carries that smell of “in between.” Ask people who live in Tokyo what there is to do in Tachikawa and few can tell you without stopping to think.

Line up the numbers, though, and the in-between town suddenly takes shape. The city covers 24.36 square kilometres. On 1 January 2026 its population was 187,440. According to JR East, about 150,000 people board at JR Tachikawa Station every day. That is roughly the population of the whole city passing through the ticket gates daily. This is not a place people merely pass. It is where the flow of people across the Tama area, the broad western half of Tokyo beyond the 23 central wards, ties itself into a knot.

The knot was not always there. The city’s own table of population figures shows that in 1759 Shibasaki Village, the old core of Tachikawa, had 1,065 people. The Edo period ended, and in 1889 the Kobu Railway, today’s Chuo Line, opened, and still the village stayed quiet. The table jumps in 1922. That was the year Tachikawa Airfield opened, and the population rose from 4,772 the year before to 6,115, an increase of more than 28 percent. The next year the village became a town, and in 1940 a city. Tachikawa grew because aeroplanes called it into being.

After the Second World War the airfield was taken over by the US military, and it was fully returned to Japan in 1977. The wide land that came back became Showa Kinen Park (the Showa Memorial Park), a national disaster-response base, a district of national research institutes, and a district of public art. To the south are the Tama River, a shrine said to be twelve hundred years old, and a stone pillar that is a National Treasure. To the north runs the Tamagawa Aqueduct, which once carried water to Edo (old Tokyo), and there grows a white vegetable that is raised without ever seeing sunlight. Peel back one layer of this supposedly plain town, and you usually find something that exists nowhere else.

This page is the entrance to our Tachikawa Walks feature: what is here, how to walk it, and which story to read first, guided only by facts I could confirm. Before we set out, one question to carry along. Why has this town, each time it came into possession of a stretch of flat land, been able to turn itself into something completely different?

What Kind of Place Is Tachikawa? The City in Numbers

If I had to sum up Tachikawa in a phrase, I would call it “the town that keeps turning empty land into something else.” The flat ground that was cleared for an airfield became a military base, was handed back, and became a park, a district of research institutes and a district of art. So when you walk in Tachikawa, several eras are stacked on the same spot. The lawn you are lying on may once have been a runway. In Tachikawa, even the place you take a nap has a CV.

Why was this place chosen? The city’s history pamphlet on the airfield gives four reasons. It was close to the capital. It had wide, flat land with no houses on it. It had a railway. And it had good weather. Read those four again and you have a description of Tachikawa today. Close to central Tokyo, flat, on the railway, with a big sky. The conditions that drew aeroplanes a hundred years ago now draw people.

Tachikawa by the Numbers

• 24.36 — the city’s area in square kilometres. Of that, Showa Kinen Park is planned to cover 180 hectares. Somebody has stuck a rather large green postage stamp on the city map.
• 187,440 — the population on 1 January 2026. There was also a year, 1945, when it fell by more than 40 percent, from 60,000 the year before to 34,586. A town’s numbers do not hide the war years.
• About 150,000 — the number of people boarding at JR Tachikawa Station each day. Even if every resident of the city went through the gates every morning, it would still fall a little short.
• 113.2 — the ratio of daytime to night-time population (percent) in the 2020 national census. By day, Tachikawa holds more than 24,000 more people than by night. This ratio is the highest of Tokyo’s 26 cities (the municipalities outside the 23 wards that have city status).
• 52 — the annual harvest of Tokyo udo, in tonnes. Tachikawa grows 32.9 percent of Tokyo’s crop, more than anywhere else in the metropolis.
• 109 — the number of public artworks at Faret Tachikawa. Some of them are disguised as ventilation shafts or bollards and go to work, quite seriously, every day.

Eight Things Tachikawa Residents Like to Tell People

For anyone who stumbles when asked “So what is there in Tachikawa?”, here are eight confirmed facts. Boasts are stronger with a source attached. When you use them at a party, you may leave the source out.

1. Japan’s first scheduled private passenger air service flew from Tachikawa. According to the city’s records it began in July 1929, between Tachikawa and Osaka. Famous aviators came one after another from abroad, the records say, and the name Tachikawa became known internationally.
2. Tachikawa is Tokyo’s top producer of Tokyo udo. The plant is grown white, without light, in pits three metres underground.
3. There is a National Treasure in the city. The six-sided stone pillar (rokumen sekito) at Fusai-ji Temple was made in 1361. Of the pillars of this type known to carry carved images, the one at Fusai-ji is said to be the only one confirmed.
4. You can touch Antarctic ice for free. The Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum in Midori-cho is the exhibition space of the National Institute of Polar Research, and admission is free. The institute also holds about 17,400 meteorite specimens.
5. The streets hold contemporary art by 92 artists from 36 countries and regions. One of the works is the last piece by the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd.
6. A city with no sea has a beach barbecue site that calls itself the largest in Japan. It is a one-minute walk from Tachihi Station. Even its operators write “in Tachikawa, where there is supposed to be no sea.”
7. There is a hall with about 2,500 seats, the largest of its kind in the Tama area. It stands in GREEN SPRINGS, a new district opened on former airfield land in 2020.
8. Among Tokyo’s 26 cities, it is the one whose population grows most in the daytime. In the 2020 census, Tachikawa’s daytime population was 207,832 and its resident population 183,581. The ratio of 113.2 percent is the highest of any city in Tokyo. People come in to work, to study and to shop.

Things to Do in Tachikawa by Interest: History, Nature and Art

First, the essentials, one line each. The detail follows below and on the next page.

• History: Suwa Shrine, said to date from 811; Fusai-ji Temple, founded in 1353, with its National Treasure stone pillar; Tachikawa Airfield from 1922 to the return of the US base.
• Nature: Showa Kinen Park, the Negawa Greenway and the Tama River, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, the springs of the Yagawa stream and the woods of the Tachikawa escarpment.
• Art: the 109 works of Faret Tachikawa; the sculptures and light works of GREEN SPRINGS.
• Rides and the sky: the Tama Monorail, Tachihi and the memory of aircraft, cycling, keirin bicycle racing.
• With children: the Minna no Harappa meadow, PLAY! PARK, Tachikawa Manga Park, the Tachikawa Disaster Prevention Center.
• Rainy days: the Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum, PLAY! MUSEUM, Manga Park, cinemas.
• Evening: glowing artworks, a plaza open 24 hours, autumn foliage illuminations, little alleys of bars.
• Food: Tokyo udo, udo souvenirs, Tachikawa’s noodles.

Walking Through History

Tachikawa’s history starts south of the station. Suwa Shrine in Shibasaki-cho is an old shrine said to have received, in 811, a share of the spirit of the great Suwa deity of Shinshu (today’s Nagano Prefecture). Fusai-ji Temple was founded in 1353 by the Tachikawa clan, the local warrior band, as their family temple. The temple printed Buddhist scriptures known as the “Fusai-ji editions,” and the city describes it as having been the centre of Buddhist culture in this region at the time. The National Treasure pillar is made of six slabs of green schist carved with two Nio guardian kings and the Four Heavenly Kings. (Walking Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine, in Japanese)

Sunagawa, in the north, was a village of newly opened farmland in the Edo period. In the Keicho era (1596–1615) Murano San’emon of Kishi Village began to clear it, and in 1657, when the Sunagawa branch of the aqueduct arrived, development began in earnest. Along the Itsukaichi Kaido road, long strip-shaped house plots line up from east to west, seemingly forever. Locals called this stretched-out village “Niri Hatcho, Naga Shinden”: “two ri and eight cho, the long new field,” ri and cho being old units of distance. Your legs get tired just hearing the name. Sunagawa merged with Tachikawa in 1963. (Along the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa, in Japanese)

Modern Tachikawa is the story of a station and an airfield. Our pieces on the story of Tachikawa Station, the US base and the Sunagawa struggle, the riddles in local place names and a timeline of Tachikawa history follow the eras in order.

Nature and Water

Tachikawa sits on the Musashino Plateau, the great terrace of land west of central Tokyo, and apart from the river-terrace cliffs of the Tama River it is mostly flat. Those cliffs decide where Tachikawa’s water is. The Negawa, to the south, was a stream that gathered spring water at the foot of the terrace. Today’s Negawa Greenway runs for about 1.3 kilometres past paddling pools and waterside arbours to the riverbed of the Tama. The city’s “Twelve Green Views” include the cherry embankment of the Negawa and the Tachikawa escarpment in Fujimi-cho. On the escarpment, Musashino’s old mixed woodland survives, and in places spring water seeps out. (From the Negawa Greenway to the Tama River, in Japanese)

Around the Negawa Greenway there is also a “Path of Poems.” For about 2.4 kilometres it is lined with stones carved with haiku, tanka and poems, and one of them is “Negi” (“Leeks”) by Takamura Kotaro. It is a poem about leeks sent to him by a friend in Tachikawa, and the stone even records the line in which the artist admits, with some chagrin, that he has been beaten by a leek. Tachikawa’s farm produce has a track record of out-competing a poet.

The Tama River runs 138 kilometres from Mt. Kasatori in Yamanashi Prefecture to Tokyo Bay. The Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism has chosen Tachikawa’s Tama River green space as one of its “100 Views of Mt. Fuji in the Kanto Region,” and on a clear winter day, it is said, Fuji appears between the Tanzawa and Chichibu ranges.

In the north, the Tamagawa Aqueduct, dug in 1653, crosses the city for about 5.6 kilometres. The channel is said to have been dug in about eight months over some 43 kilometres, from Hamura to Yotsuya Okido at the edge of Edo, and in spring its banks become a tunnel of cherry blossom.

And the largest green of all is Showa Kinen Park. Over a year, more than 800 species of flowers and plants come and go. (Walking Showa Kinen Park; and, in Japanese, Komorebi no Sato and the Japanese Garden, on the park’s re-created farming village)

A Town of Art

Three minutes from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station along the elevated walkway is Faret Tachikawa, a district opened in 1994, which holds 109 works of public art. Benches, bollards, ventilation shafts, street lamps. The works double as street furniture, so it can happen that the bench you have been sitting on turns out to be a piece by a world-famous artist. Since 1997 a citizens’ volunteer group, the Faret Club, has guided visitors around the works and kept them clean. (Walking the Art of Faret Tachikawa)

GREEN SPRINGS, built on former airfield land, also has sculptures and works of light. It has more than 350 kinds of plants. A plaza of about one hectare was made on an artificial deck at second-floor level, with a car park underneath. The 120-metre cascade is said to re-create the murmur of the Tamagawa Aqueduct. When you learn that a place so pleasant to walk in is actually the roof of a car park, the soles of your feet tingle slightly. (Walking GREEN SPRINGS, in Japanese)

Having seen the town’s artistic face, I want to go back to that question. Why could Tachikawa be reborn so many times? Half the answer is left, in small traces, in the ground north of the station.

What the Airfield Town Left Behind: Small Traces North of the Station

I read on through the airfield’s chronology in the city’s records. In November 1922 the Army’s 5th Air Battalion moved to Tachikawa. During the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, private aircraft were busy flying reporters and carrying their copy. In 1927 a Soviet aircraft flew in, the first foreign aeroplane ever to land at Tachikawa. In 1929, scheduled private passenger flights began between Tachikawa and Osaka. In 1931 the passenger planes, and in 1933 civil aviation as a whole, moved to Haneda.

Moved to Haneda. That line catches in my throat a little. Today Haneda is Tokyo’s front door to the sky, but for a few years before that, Tokyo’s civilian skies opened from Tachikawa. Tachikawa handed the role of airport to Haneda, and in exchange came to be called a “military city.” In 1934 the Army Air Arsenal moved in from Tokorozawa.

The traces are scattered north of the station. According to “Tachikawa Monogatari,” the newsletter of the city’s history compilation office, the site of the main gate of the Army’s 5th Air Regiment, later the main gate of the US base, became a small rest area marking the city’s 50th anniversary in 1990, where Himalayan cedars recall the old days. Freight-only spur lines once ran to the east and west sides of the airfield; when the base was returned the track was removed, and in 1980 it was reborn as the Sakae Green Space, a footpath. In those days, the trains on that line were freight wagons heading for the base. Today the people walking it are out for a stroll. The old track bed, when you walk it, is oddly straight and a little long. Even as a footpath, it has not shaken off its habits as a railway.

There are traces of the aircraft factory too. Ishikawajima Aircraft Manufacturing, later Tachikawa Aircraft, moved here from Tsukishima in 1930. In 1943, 480 single-storey semi-detached houses were built for its workers as the “Takamatsu Housing.” But they stood in Sunagawa Village, and because a Tachikawa place name might fool people into thinking it was part of Tachikawa, it was later renamed “Nanbu Housing.” An address that doesn’t match its name causes trouble, then as now.

There are traces of entertainment as well. The newsletter says that “Tachikawa Kinema,” completed in 1925, was the forerunner of “Tachikawa, the movie town.” When more people work at the airfield and the town grows, a cinema appears. The reasons people gather and the places that entertain them usually grow at the same speed.

After the war, national institutions came to the former base. According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, five bodies — the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Institute of Polar Research, the Institute of Statistical Mathematics, the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics, and the Local Autonomy College — moved to the former base district, 345 people in all. Japanese classics, Antarctic ice, probability and statistics, the Japanese language. Land that once watched aircraft take off and land now carries one corner of the nation’s learning.

In 1955 the Sunagawa struggle against the expansion of the base began, and in 1968 the plan to extend the runway was announced as cancelled. In 1969 the US military announced it would stop flying at Tachikawa, and in 1977 the base land was returned. In 1983 Showa Kinen Park partly opened, in 1986 construction of the wide-area disaster-response base began, and in 1994 Faret Tachikawa opened. A single sheet of flat land, in a little over half a century, had lived through almost every use an era could ask of it.

Here I will answer half of the opening question. Tachikawa could be reborn again and again because its wide, flat land was never used up all at once. The base fences did not come down in one go, and the park opened bit by bit over thirty years. Turning empty land, each time, into whatever the age needed: that patience is the town’s greatest talent. The other half you will have to pick up as you walk. On the next page: rides, children and Tachikawa at night, and four routes to follow.