Tachikawa Autumn Leaves Guide: Ginkgo, Zelkova and Where to Walk

Where and when to see autumn leaves in Tachikawa: the ginkgo avenues of Showa Kinen Park, the zelkova Tokyo voted down, and a shrine tree that survived a fire.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

In 1966, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government held a vote among Tokyo residents to choose an official tree for Tokyo. There were three candidates: the zelkova, the ginkgo and the Somei-Yoshino cherry. The ginkgo won, and the ginkgo is still Tokyo’s tree today.

Eight years later, in 1974, the City of Tachikawa chose its own city tree. It chose the zelkova. Tachikawa picked, as its own, the tree that had lost Tokyo’s election.

For mere sympathy with the underdog, it was rather elaborate. Why the zelkova? And in a city that holds Showa Kinen Park, famous for the yellow of its ginkgo trees, where is the true colour of autumn in Tachikawa? I started reading the city’s records intending to find the best spots for autumn leaves, and before I knew it I was tracing a story about this city’s wind, its soil, and the fallen leaves of the Showa era (1926–1989).

When and where to see autumn leaves in Tachikawa: first, a map

Let me put the practical answers first.

If you want to see yellow ginkgo leaves in Tachikawa (立川), start with Showa Kinen Park (国営昭和記念公園), the large national government park beside the city centre. The park gives the best time for its ginkgo as late October to late November. The ginkgo avenue along the Canal, just inside the Tachikawa Gate, is about 200 m long; the “Katarai Ginkgo Avenue” near the Nishi-Tachikawa Gate is about 300 m. The park also recommends the trees along the cycling course and in the Children’s Forest. The maples turn from late October to early December, and can be seen in the Japanese Garden, the Flowering Tree Garden, Komorebi Hill and elsewhere. In November there is an “Autumn Leaves Festival,” and since 2019 there has also been an “Autumn Night Walk,” with the maples of the Japanese Garden and other places lit up after dark.

Outside the park, the zelkova takes the lead. Zelkova trees appear again and again in the “Twelve Green Views of Tachikawa,” chosen by the city’s Greening Promotion Council in 2003: the zelkova avenue on Tachikawa Kitaguchi Odori, the big zelkova of Wakaba-cho on the Itsukaichi Kaido road, and Matsunaka Danchi’s “tunnel of zelkova, the city tree.” Suwa Shrine and Azusami Tenjin-sha Shrine were chosen for their shrine forests, and Ryusen-ji Temple in Sunagawa for its towering old trees. And in Shibasaki-cho stands the only natural monument in the city: the Great Zelkova of Hachiman Shrine.

The best time varies from year to year. According to the observations the Japan Meteorological Agency has long kept in central Tokyo, the normal (thirty-year average) date on which Tokyo’s ginkgo turn yellow is 23 November, and the normal date on which its maples turn red is 28 November. In 2025 the ginkgo turned on 22 November and the maples on 23 November. Tachikawa lies some distance west of central Tokyo, so these are only a rough guide; before you set out, check that year’s reports, such as the park’s flower news.

One number surprised me. In the first year in the Meteorological Agency’s table, 1953, Tokyo’s ginkgo turned yellow on 3 November. The earliest was 26 October 1957. The latest was 3 December 2024. Tokyo’s ginkgo used to turn on Culture Day, the 3 November national holiday; now they sometimes turn in December. In that same year, 2024, the maples also turned red on 3 December, so yellow and red slipped into December together. The “autumn” of my childhood and the “autumn” of children today may be about a month apart on the calendar.

Bokusui at Tachikawa Station: “the autumn leaves of the cherry tree”

I want to begin the story of autumn in Tachikawa in front of the station.

In 1906, the tanka poet Wakayama Bokusui stopped at Tachikawa Station. In front of the station there was a teahouse for passengers waiting for trains, and there was also a large cherry tree. There, Bokusui wrote this tanka (a 31-syllable poem):

At the old teahouse by Tachikawa Station, in the shade of the cherry tree’s autumn leaves — you, whom I saw off.

The shade of the autumn leaves of a cherry tree. It is a poem about a farewell beneath autumn leaves, not spring blossom. According to material from the Tachikawa City Library, the stone carved with this poem now stands in the middle of the bus rotary at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station. On the back, it is said, are words to the effect that it was erected to mark the tenth anniversary of the city’s founding, as a milestone looking back on the hometown’s past and towards the distant future. The site of the teahouse is now a bus terminal, and the stone stands in one corner of it.

Among the cherries in front of the Meiji-era (1868–1912) station was one with its own name. The city’s cultural property “Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village” consists of sketches of Tachikawa Village in the late 1890s and the 1900s by the local painter Baba Kichizo, coloured in the early Showa years. One of them, “The Thousand Cherry Trees in Front of Tachikawa Station,” shows the station around 1902 and a cherry tree called Tamazakura, the “jewel cherry,” well loved by station staff and locals, the city says. Whether the cherry under whose leaves Bokusui stood was Tamazakura, no source says. But in front of Tachikawa Station in the Meiji era, the cherry was a landmark for people in spring and autumn alike.

People think of the cherry as a spring tree. But cherry leaves turn red too. As I wrote in our article on the Negawa and the Tama River, in October the leaves of the cherry rows on the Negawa Greenway are already changing colour and starting to fall. Before the ginkgo and maples hit their peak, the cherries start autumn early. What Bokusui saw must have been that kind of slightly early autumn colour.

Autumn in front of the Meiji station meant the autumn leaves of a cherry. So which tree stands for autumn in today’s Tachikawa? The city has an answer it chose for itself.

The tree Tokyo did not choose: the zelkova and the “red wind”

To choose Tokyo’s tree, a public vote was held among Tokyo residents on three species selected by the Tokyo Tree Selection Committee — the zelkova, the ginkgo and the Somei-Yoshino — and the ginkgo was announced on 14 November 1966. The ginkgo, the metropolitan government explained, is regarded as a survivor from ancient times, and because it resists pollution and fire, it is used as a street tree. The third candidate, the Somei-Yoshino, later became Tokyo’s official flower in 1984. Of the two losers, one was taken in as a flower. That left the zelkova.

Tachikawa chose its city tree and city flower in 1974. It invited residents widely to make proposals, and in June the city’s Greening Promotion Council, consulted by the mayor, gave its recommendation. Based on that, the city chose the zelkova (keyaki, Zelkova serrata) as the city tree and the kobushi magnolia as the city flower. The council said it had deliberated while respecting the voices of residents and taking into account that the choices should suit Tachikawa’s climate and character and be easy to feel close to. As its reasons, it said that both zelkova and kobushi are native to the Musashino plain, and that the zelkova is a tree with deep ties to residents, having long coexisted with their lives as a windbreak.

A windbreak. Here lies half the answer.

The city’s Green Master Plan says this about the area around the Itsukaichi Kaido road in the north of the city. In the Edo period (1603–1868), Sunagawa Shinden was opened up as new farmland, and with the digging of the Tamagawa Aqueduct as the trigger, the settlement spread east and west along the Itsukaichi Kaido. Around the road there remain even now farmland divided into long, narrow strips, and the household woods of farmhouses that served as windbreaks protecting homes from the akkaze, the “red wind” carrying north winds and dust. The zelkova trees protected as heritage trees, part of those household woods, together with the Tamagawa Aqueduct, make a local landscape that keeps something of old Musashino.

The red wind. Presumably the winter north wind that whips up the red earth of the Kanto loam, the reddish volcanic-ash soil of this plateau. So that the soil of the fields was not carried off into the sky, people lined the north side of their houses with zelkovas. Before Tachikawa’s zelkovas were scenery, they were a wall for daily life.

Someone has left a description of Sunagawa in the Showa era. In 2016 the city compiled residents’ war experiences into a collection, and in it is a contribution by a person from Ichiban-cho. Around 1935, they write, in Sunagawa Village the Itsukaichi Kaido ran as a single road from the Fussa town boundary east to Kokubunji, with farmhouses on both sides, and the hedges of zelkova and oak around those houses served as windbreaks. The Itsukaichi Kaido was so thickly overgrown that it was almost dark even in daytime, and cool even in summer. The road was not paved but gravel, and the bus ran from Tachikawa Station round by Sunagawa Kuban.

A road so dark with hedges of zelkova and oak that it was dim even at midday. For young people who drive along the Itsukaichi Kaido today, it may be a hard scene to imagine. Some older people may remember that darkness and coolness together with the feel of the gravel under their feet.

Household woods combining zelkova and evergreen oak are especially well known in the Kanto region, an encyclopedia says. The zelkova drops its leaves in winter; the evergreen oak keeps its leaves all year. In summer both block the sun; in winter the oak takes the wind, and sunlight comes in through the bare branches of the zelkova. It is a well-made combination. The name keyaki is said to come from keya, an old word meaning “splendid,” a softened form of keyashi no ki, “the splendid tree.” Because it is strong and easy to obtain, it has also been widely used as building timber. It protects the house, and sometimes becomes the house itself. “The splendid tree” lives up to its name.

What has become of that landscape? The city’s green plan says the roadside of the Itsukaichi Kaido is designated the “Itsukaichi Road Scenic District” (about 12.0 ha) and the roadside of the Tamagawa Aqueduct the “Tamagawa Aqueduct Scenic District” (about 11.7 ha), areas where the rich natural landscape is protected. Even so, the green coverage ratio — the share of land covered by trees and plants seen from above — fell in the Itsukaichi Kaido district from 29.7 per cent in 2013 to 26.3 per cent in 2023, and in the Tamagawa Aqueduct district from 45.8 to 40.5 per cent. The road that was dark even at midday is slowly getting lighter.

The ninth of the Twelve Green Views, “the big zelkova of Wakaba-cho,” is what remains of it. The theme is “household woods.” The city says the highlights are the household woods along the Itsukaichi Kaido, the big zelkova that has kept off the karakkaze, the dry winter wind, and the farming landscape that continues behind. The city designates as heritage trees healthy, beautiful trees with a trunk circumference of at least 1.5 m at 1.5 m above the ground and a height of at least 10 m, and at the end of fiscal 2024 there were 445 of them. Many are along the Itsukaichi Kaido and around the Tachikawa escarpment. But there are 19 fewer than when the previous plan was drawn up. Some trees are cut down because of the burden of looking after them, and others lose their shape through heavy pruning, the plan says.

In October 1980, the city added six more flowers that residents could feel close to, alongside the kobushi: violets, azaleas, salvia, cosmos, sasanqua camellias and daffodils. Autumn cosmos and the sasanqua of late autumn and winter are on the list. Considering that Showa Kinen Park now holds a cosmos festival from September to October, the people choosing in 1980 showed real foresight.

The city also describes the zelkova’s autumn colours properly. The zelkova is a tall deciduous tree that can reach 30 m in height with a trunk 2 m across; its trunk stands straight and its branches spread like a fan. In autumn, its leaves turn a beautiful yellowish brown or reddish brown and fall. It is not as showy as the gold of the ginkgo. It does not blaze like the red of the maple. It is a subdued colour, reds and yellows tinged with brown. I can see, a little, why Tokyo’s voters did not choose it. But as the colour of a tree that has protected homes as a windbreak hedge for generations, I think there could be no better one.

So where is the zelkova that has lived longest in Tachikawa? Leafing through the city’s list of cultural properties, I came across an unexpected fact.

Tachikawa’s one and only natural monument: the Great Zelkova of Hachiman Shrine

If you list the national, metropolitan and city cultural properties designated in Tachikawa, you get one National Treasure, one national historic site, one Important Cultural Property, one nationally registered tangible cultural property, one metropolitan historic site and one metropolitan tangible cultural property, and then thirty or so city-designated properties. Among them, in the column for “natural monuments,” there is just one name: the Great Zelkova of Hachiman Shrine (八幡神社大欅, Hachiman Jinja Okeyaki).

In Tachikawa, the only plant designated a natural monument is this single zelkova. The zelkova chosen as the city tree is also the city’s one and only natural monument. In the world of Tachikawa’s trees, the zelkova reigns alone.

It was designated on 10 March 1955. Its location is in front of 1-7-8 Shibasaki-cho. About 30 m south of the place where Hachiman Shrine was founded stands a tree with a strikingly large trunk, the city says. This great zelkova was damaged in a wildfire in 1824, and it is said that scorch marks from that fire remained on the upper part of the tree until recent years. Hachiman Shrine was later merged into Suwa Shrine, and the shrine moved away. The tree stayed. I have written about this tree and the history of old Shibasaki Village in our walk through Tachikawa’s old village and in the article on Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine, so I will not go deeper here.

Let me add just one voice from the town. A personal website that introduces Tachikawa’s walking spots with photographs says of the great zelkova that, judging from the thickness of the trunk that still remains, you can imagine it would have been a hugely imposing tree had the disaster not happened. A tree that would have been bigger but for a wildfire two hundred years ago. It seems a natural monument is something you look at including the height it has lost.

The great zelkova is about 200 m west of the south torii gate of Suwa Shrine. If you want to look up at it in autumn, November is good. Suwa Shrine holds a chrysanthemum exhibition for about two weeks every November. See the chrysanthemums at the shrine, walk a little, and look at the great zelkova in its autumn colour. Autumn in Shibasaki is a double bill of flowers and leaves.

Autumn in Tachikawa in numbers

• 1 — tree. The number of natural monuments in Tachikawa. And it is a zelkova, the same as the city tree.
• 445 — trees. Tachikawa’s heritage trees (end of fiscal 2024). Every one of them an imposing tree, at least 1.5 m round the trunk at 1.5 m up, and at least 10 m tall.
• 3 — candidates. The number of candidates in the 1966 vote for Tokyo’s tree: zelkova, ginkgo and Somei-Yoshino. Tachikawa picked up the one that lost.
• 23 November — the normal date on which Tokyo’s ginkgo turn yellow. In 1953 it was 3 November; in 2024, 3 December. From Culture Day to December.
• 28 November — the normal date on which Tokyo’s maples turn red. The red comes chasing five days behind the ginkgo.
• 300 — metres. The length of the “Katarai Ginkgo Avenue” in Showa Kinen Park. A few minutes if you walk briskly; an hour if you take photographs.

A wayfarer’s quiz

In the 1966 public vote to choose Tokyo’s tree, which of these was not a candidate? (A) Zelkova (B) Ginkgo (C) Maple. The answer is at the end.