イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

イタリア産天然溶岩石を使った溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ「オンザショア」

Tachikawa Bridges Walk: ‘Nameless Bridge’ to a Double-Deck Crossing

Tappi Bridge: a double-deck bridge for road and monorail

Right beside the point where the Zanbori River flows into the Tama River is the Tappi Bridge (立日橋).

Looking up at the Tappi Bridge, where the Tama Monorail runs on the deck above the road.
Looking up at the Tappi Bridge, where the Tama Monorail runs on the deck above the road.
Photo: Tx-re / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons

It is read Tappi-bashi; the Tokyo Metropolitan Bureau of Construction’s newsletter gives the reading in small kana. 立 from Tachikawa and 日 from Hino: it seems natural to read it as one character each from the names of the towns on either bank. The Keihin River Office of the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, in its introduction to the bridge, gives the left bank as Shibasaki-cho 6-chome, Tachikawa, the right bank as Hino-honmachi 6-chome, Hino, and its completion as March 1989.

What is unusual about this bridge? Another bridge rides on top of the road. Above the metropolitan road bridge runs the track of the Tama Toshi Monorail. It is a two-storey bridge. According to the encyclopedia, because of the monorail project, the road deck opened first, in March 1989, and when the monorail between Tachikawa-Kita and Tama Center opened in January 2000, the upper deck came into use. The city chronology records a partial opening in 1989 and full opening in 1991. The ground floor opened for business first, and the upstairs tenant moved in eleven years later.

Its length, according to the records of the Japan Bridge Association, is 417 metres. It is a steel girder bridge using 781 tonnes of steel. The sight of road and monorail stacked one above the other across the Tama River is much bigger in real life than in photographs.

This bridge has a small sight that only locals know. At the foot of the bridge on the Tachikawa side, a tunnel passes under the road, and its walls are painted. According to the newspaper agency’s column, they show Mount Fuji in winter, fireflies, a kingfisher, autumn pampas grass, herons, a family of ducks and swallows, together with Miyazawa Kenji’s famous poem “Ame ni mo makezu” (“Unbeaten by the Rain”). They were painted by pupils and parents of the nearby Tokyo Kenji School. The tunnel used to be badly covered in graffiti, so they got permission from the Tokyo government to paint it, and the graffiti stopped. Driving out graffiti with the power of pictures: rather clever.

A short way downstream from the Tappi Bridge is the Hino Bridge, built in 1926. I told its history, and the story of its rebuilding in the 2020s, in the article on Nekawa and the Tama River and the article on the Tama River’s floods and bridges. Upstream is the Chuo Line’s railway bridge, which crossed the river in 1889. On Tachikawa’s stretch of the Tama River, bridges of three eras — a Meiji railway bridge, a Taisho highway bridge and a Heisei double-decker — stand within walking distance of one another. (For the line overhead, see our Tama Monorail guide.)

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The bridges of the Nekawa, and the Showa-era Kotoobi Bridge

East from the Tappi Bridge, the Nekawa Green Path runs along the foot of the terrace cliff.

Walk today’s green path from the west, a local information site says, and you pass under the metropolitan road’s Shibasaki Bridge, where the monorail runs, the Nekawa Bridge on the Shin-Okutama Kaido, and the Yoshimi Bridge on the Koshu Kaido. The end of the path is the Nekawa Kaigarazaka Bridge, designed to evoke a suspension bridge (I told that story in the Nekawa and Tama River article). A collection of old bridge data compiled by a private engineer lists the “Yoshimi Bridge”, a reinforced-concrete arch built over the Nekawa in 1926 — born the same year as the Hino Bridge.

The Nekawa has one more bridge, preserved in Showa-era photographs.

Then: issue 14 of Tachikawa Monogatari carries a photograph taken in 1941 of “the Kotoobi Bridge over the Nekawa and its surroundings”. Cherry trees had been planted on the Nekawa’s banks since the Taisho era, and until the mid-1950s there was a rowing-boat landing and a teahouse. Upstream of the Kotoobi Bridge, two irrigation channels were drawn off to the south of the Nekawa, and every year on 1 May the people who used the water cleaned and maintained them together. A photograph from around 1955 is said to show people resting after finishing the work on the weir and channels.

Now: those channels could no longer draw water from the Nekawa in the first half of the 1970s and fell out of use. The lower Nekawa was filled in during river works in 1972, and in 1997 a green path was made over its old course. The boat landing is gone. The bridge with the beautiful name Kotoobi still crosses the river in the Showa-era photograph.

Bridges over the tracks, and bridges over a vanished river

Tachikawa’s bridges do not only cross water.

The “Megane Bridge” (“Spectacles Bridge”) that crosses the Chuo Line southwest of Tachikawa Station is the third of its name. According to the local information board, as introduced in the newspaper agency’s column, the first was an arch bridge of Hino brick; it was demolished in 1935 for the doubling of the line between Tachikawa and Toyoda, and replaced by a second bridge with an arch made of old rails. The current third bridge was built in 2010, according to the city’s plan. The first Megane Bridge is said to be depicted in “Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village”, a cultural property designated by the city: sketches of Tachikawa village in the Meiji 30s and 40s (around 1897–1912) by the local painter Baba Kichizo, coloured in the early Showa era. At the foot of the information board, they say, bricks from the first bridge have been laid as a memorial.

Right next to the Megane Bridge is another curious bridge. Water crosses over the railway. It is a water bridge carrying the Shibasaki branch channel, drawn from the Tamagawa Aqueduct, over the Chuo Line; the column calls it the “Mizuhashi”, the water bridge. An Edo-era branch channel stepping over a Meiji-era railway. People and cars are not the only things that cross the tracks.

Further on, the Okutama Kaido crosses the Chuo Line on the “Nakayama Overpass”. According to the column, the first was a wooden bridge called the “Yamanaka Overpass”, also depicted in the Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village, with the village spread below the terrace beyond it, distant mountains, and even Mount Fuji at the right-hand edge.

East of the station, according to the city chronology, an underpass at the level crossing east of Tachikawa Station was built in 1962, and the “Fujimi Bridge” overpass crossing the Chuo Line was completed. The north–south free passage across the station opened in 1982, and the passage on the west side of the station in 2016. A community-paper article preserves the story that the “West Crossing”, where roads crossed the Ome and Chuo lines west of the station, was once called “the crossing that never opens”, and disappeared in 1965 when an underpass was built. I would like to show today’s free passages to the Showa-era people who waited, exhausted, at that crossing.

And there are bridges you can no longer cross. Around the North Exit there was once a drainage channel about 4 kilometres long, dug to carry rainwater overflowing from Tachikawa Airfield to the Tama River. According to the city chronology, water first ran through it in 1947, it was named the “Midori River” in 1949, and it was covered over in 1960. The names “Akebono Bridge” and “Higashi Bridge”, which survive in the names of road junctions, are relics of bridges over that river. A blogger who walked in pursuit of the river writes that in Hagoromo-cho there is the “Shakukushi Bridge”, with the post at only one end still standing. The river has disappeared underground, but one bridge post remembers, above ground, where the river was.

What the names of bridges remember

Having crossed this far, I return to the opening question. What do the names of Tachikawa’s bridges remember?

The numbers — the First Bridge, the Third Bridge, the Fourth Bridge — remembered the order of life, from upstream to downstream, in Sunagawa village, stretched long and thin along the Tamagawa Aqueduct. The Master’s Bridge remembered the headman’s house; Tenno Bridge, a village shrine; Miya-no-hashi, Azusami Tenjin-sha. Shin-Ochirashi Bridge remembered a village troubled by overflowing water; the Below-the-Slope and Below-the-Falls bridges, the terrace cliffs cut by the Tama River. Akebono Bridge and Higashi Bridge, a river that vanished underground. And the Tappi Bridge carries, just as they are, the names of the two towns on either side of the river.

Not every bridge gave me an answer, though. Ichiban Bridge, Inari Bridge, Kamijuku Bridge, Taka-no-michi Bridge, Matsukaze Bridge: I could not confirm where many names came from. And the Nameless Bridges of Fujimi-cho said nothing to the very end. A bridge with no name was probably built for a road of daily life with no name — the road to the fields, the road across to the house next door. Like the field bridges recorded in Edo’s Josuiki.

Tachikawa, in the middle of Tama, is a town where rivers, an aqueduct and railway lines cross again and again. Where they cross, there is always a bridge. Fifty-one city bridges, Tokyo’s bridges, railway bridges. Each is the mark of a place where someone wished to get to the other side. This town is called the hub of Tama not only because its station is big. It is because, over hundreds of years, it added places to cross, one at a time.

Answer to the quiz

The answer is (A), the Master’s Bridge. According to the local information board quoted by the aqueduct encyclopedia, Mikage Bridge was the fourth bridge from upstream on the aqueduct in Sunagawa village and was called “the Fourth Bridge”, and because it was close to the house of the Sunagawa family, the village headmen, it was also called Danna-bashi, the Master’s Bridge. At the end of the Taisho era it was renamed 御影橋 and later rewritten as 見影橋.

Before you go

  • The aqueduct bridges (Tenno, Shinya, Mikage and Konpira): Musashi-Sunagawa Station on the Seibu Haijima Line is close to Mikage Bridge. Tenno Bridge is where the Itsukaichi Kaido meets the aqueduct. Walk east along the green path beside the aqueduct and you can cross Shinya, Mikage and Konpira bridges in turn. The city’s guide to the aqueduct: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004847/1019994/1004854.html
  • Tappi Bridge and the Zanbori confluence: a few minutes’ walk towards the Tama River from Shibasaki-Taiikukan Station on the Tama Monorail. Bicycles speed through the tunnel at the foot of the bridge, so take care on foot.
  • The Nekawa bridges: the Nekawa Green Path is within walking distance of the South Exit of Tachikawa Station. The city’s walking route “From Yagawa towards the Tama River” guides you to the Nekawa Kaigarazaka Bridge at its end: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004848/1004890.html
  • Megane Bridge and the Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village: the Megane Bridge is west of the station’s South Exit, along the Chuo Line. The Twelve Views are kept by the Tachikawa City Museum of History and Folklore (check with the museum whether they are on display and when it is open): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004847/1019994/1004881.html
  • List of the bridges managed by the city (Tachikawa City Bridge Life-Extension and Repair Plan, Japanese): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/_res/projects/default_project/page/001/006/651/r4_kyoryo_chojumyouka_keikaku.pdf
  • Getting there: Tachikawa Station is reached from Shinjuku on the JR Chuo Line without changing trains. Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on JR, the monorail and Seibu trains.
  • Putting it together: the Below-the-Slope bridges connect with the terrain and slopes article; the aqueduct’s passage under the Zanbori with the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa article; the Hino Bridge and the Chuo Line railway bridge with the Tama River floods and bridges article.
  • To find the bridges on a map, GSI Maps (Chiriin Chizu) from the Geospatial Information Authority of Japan is handy: https://maps.gsi.go.jp/

After the last bridge, at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

A bridge walk covers more ground than you expect. Cross the aqueduct bridges one by one, follow the Zanbori downstream and reach the double-deck bridge over the Tama, and your legs will have turned to wood. For the way back, you could ride the monorail across the upper deck of the Tappi Bridge to the station.

One minute’s walk from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, on the third floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a hot yoga studio heated by lava-stone plates. As well as lava-stone hot yoga, it offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lesson.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, the same hours whatever the day. Cross the aqueduct bridges in the morning, or walk the Tama riverside until evening, and there is still time to drop in.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental. You can call in on the way back from your bridge walk with nothing but yourself.

Pregnant guests cannot take part in lava-stone hot yoga, but room-temperature maternity yoga is available.

Many of our yoga instructors speak English, and the studio’s owner, Naomi Fujita — who holds Eiken Grade 1, Japan’s top English qualification, and a perfect TOEIC score, worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and lived in Alaska for three years — often helps guests from the US bases in English herself. Overseas guests have praised the English support in their Google reviews. If you would like help in English, just mention it when you book.

Studio information: https://ontheshore.jp/ — prices: https://ontheshore.jp/price/ — trial lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

On legs that have crossed 51 bridges, the last thing you cross is the pedestrian crossing at the station’s North Exit. A bridge walk in Tachikawa usually ends there.

Cover photo: The Tappi Bridge over the Tama River, with the Tama Monorail running above the red road bridge. (Photo: osekkai / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

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