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 Festivals Guide: Bon Dances, Flamenco, Nebuta and Yokai

Five hundred dancing sevillanas on Suzuran-dori by the South Exit

Spain comes to Nishiki-cho by the South Exit.

According to the announcement by the Tachikawa Tourism and Convention Association, on 29 April 2026 Suzuran-dori was closed to traffic and a stage went up. There was live flamenco, and hundreds of people danced “street flamenco” in the road. There were also performances in two local live-music venues and in the building of WINS Tachikawa, the off-track betting centre, and on a car-park roof a “caseta” with a food court and free live music. On the evening before, there was an eve-of-festival party at WINS Tachikawa, and the week before, “delivery flamenco”, with strolling flamenco performers touring restaurants. Even the coupons usable in the street’s shops are named after “dancing”. For a whole day, Tachikawa’s South Exit is dyed in Spanish colours.

The announcement describes it as a famous spring event in the Japanese flamenco world, joined by more than 500 flamenco enthusiasts from all over the country. It is organised by the Tachikawa South Exit Suzuran-dori Shopping Street Promotion Association, and 2026 was the 23rd edition.

According to the local magazine, it began in 2004, the year Suzuran-dori was first closed to traffic for a parade. A professional flamenco dancer born and raised in Nishiki-cho is also involved in running it. An article on the 13th edition in 2016 put it like this: transcending age, gender, even the contours of your figure — put on the costume and you are the star. The highlight: 500 dancers dancing together.

According to the tourism association’s announcement, the dances performed in the street include sevillanas. Brightly coloured costumes fill the shopping street from side to side. An eve-of-festival party in an off-track betting centre, a Spanish festival dance in a shopping street. Tachikawa’s South Exit has always had nerve.

That South Exit, the same magazine recalls in a series marking its 40th year, also had samba parades in the Heisei era (1989–2019), advancing through Shibasaki-cho 2-chome, playing and dancing as they went, with a Chuo Line train running in the background of the photograph. “Tachikawa means flamenco.” “No, no, Tachikawa is the holy land of hula.” “And then again there’s samba, and folk-song processions too. Tachikawa has everything,” the article says.

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

Hula in the north, and the yokai bon dance from Fussa

Hula on the north side is relatively new.

The entrance to TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, with colourful number sculptures standing in the square in front.
The entrance to TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, with colourful number sculptures standing in the square in front.
Photo: Kakidai / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

According to the Tachikawa Tourism and Convention Association’s announcement, the “Aloha Hawaiian Festival” at GREEN SPRINGS was held on 29 and 30 April 2023 to mark the 100th anniversary of the Tachihi Group: an outdoor stage for Hawaiian music and hula, and an Aloha Market. It was organised by Tachihi Holdings. A company that once built aircraft celebrated its hundredth year with hula. It has continued since, and in 2026, on 25 and 26 April, there were events at the neighbouring TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN too. The local magazine reported that at the 2024 eve-of-festival “Mele Hula Party”, a large crowd gathered at the Stage Garden and danced hula all together. Even to the same song, each school danced differently, which was fun to watch, but the dancers themselves looked happiest of all, it said. (See our GREEN SPRINGS article.)

Hula is danced in the summer station building too. At the hula festival held at Granduo Tachikawa on 1 and 2 August 2026, eight groups from hula schools active in the Tama area each danced for 30 minutes. One of them was a Tahitian dance group.

And in autumn, in the same GREEN SPRINGS plaza, the yokai come out.

“Yokai Bon Odori” is an event where people dress up as yokai, the spirits and monsters handed down in Japan since ancient times, and dance the bon dance. According to an article on the walking-guide site Santatsu, it began in 2019 as “Fussa Yokai Bon Odori”, held in a park beside a national highway in Fussa to let people enjoy the bon dance across national borders. From 2022 it moved its venue to GREEN SPRINGS in Tachikawa.

Fussa is the town of the US Yokota Air Base. The words “across national borders” probably carry the real feeling of a town next to a base. That bon dance has moved to a plaza on land that was once Tachikawa Airfield. It is as if the yokai had retraced, in reverse, the history of the airfield that moved from Tachikawa to Yokota. (See our article on Fussa and the base.)

According to the organisers’ announcement, an estimated 50,000 people came over three days in October 2025. The area around the yagura tower stage is ticketed, and to enter you must wear a yokai costume, a yukata summer kimono, or official merchandise. There cannot be many bon dances in the world with a dress code of “yokai”. Bon dancing to live music, live sets from the electronic musician Ishino Takkyu and the band Minyo Crusaders among others, a yokai contest, a “fox’s wedding” procession, and a “Tachikawa Night Parade of a Hundred Demons”. In the free area, the Tachikawa Ohayashi Preservation Society plays festival music. Traditional festival music, yokai and techno: here the bon dance has become a vessel that can hold almost anything.

The Yoito Festival’s folk-dance procession, and YOSAKOI under the monorail

Autumn’s other dance venue is the Tachikawa Yoito Festival.

The festival’s history, its floats and its lantern-decked portable shrines I wrote about in the feature’s article on fireworks and festivals and the article on Sun Sun Road. Here I look only at the dancing. The programme for the 38th festival in 2026 lists a folk-dance procession, YOSAKOI, drumming and torch-twirling. The folk-dance procession (minyo nagashi) has been one of the festival’s pillars since the first year. YOSAKOI dancers with naruko clappers in hand, and folk dancers in yukata forming their rings, pass under the same monorail. (YOSAKOI is an energetic modern festival dance that began in Kochi.)

It is an October festival now, but it was not always in autumn. According to the local magazine, the 31st festival in 2019 was held on 3 August, on midsummer Sun Sun Road. Because Tachikawa was to be a pre-Games training base for countries of the Pan American region at the Tokyo Games the following year, a samba parade was specially added that year, and the venue was in high spirits despite ferocious heat. The date changes from year to year. If you go, be sure to check that year’s announcement.

There are practice sessions for the folk-dance procession beforehand. The first piece on the organisers’ 2026 list was “Shin Tachikawa Ondo” — the “New Tachikawa Ondo”. Here I tilted my head. Of the four Tachikawa Ondo, which one is the “new” one? No ondo with “new” in its name appears in the historian’s list. Is it the fourth, from 1973, or a different song altogether? I could not confirm it. Go to a practice session and, most likely, someone dancing there will know.

Neighbourhood bon dances and “nebuta kids”: the people who carry the dances on

In the shadow of the big events, neighbourhood bon dances carry on.

In the summer of 2024, the local magazine went round the neighbourhood associations that had invited it: the Hagoromo-kai’s summer-evening bon-dance festival, the Toei-kai bon dance at Atago Shrine, the Suwa Shrine bon dance, the Nanaban-gumi summer festival, the Akebono Summer Festival. On 20 July, just as things were getting going after a performance by people from Showa Daiichi Gakuen school, a thunderstorm struck and bon dances were cancelled here and there. Instead, everyone danced happily the next day. The bon dance on 28 July was lively, with lots of children. A bon dance washed out by rain gets carried over to the next day. That is how much people want to dance.

The same magazine does not hide the worries of those who keep it going. Its autumn 2019 issue says it heard complaints about a shortage of people to carry the portable shrine at the Suwa Shrine grand festival too. It goes on to say it heard that even the Hagoromo nebuta festival, said to be the biggest in Kanto, is not supported by Tachikawa people alone, and concludes that borrowing the strength of people from other areas is worth considering.

That “outside strength” may now be the most distinctive feature of Tachikawa’s dancing. The Nebuta Society’s youth section comes from elsewhere in Tokyo. Flamenco draws 500 people from all over the country. The yokai bon dance came from Fussa. And children, too, are looking for places to dance. Tachikawa City’s Children’s Committee once held an event to make it happen after hearing the voice “We want a place where junior-high and high-school students can dance and play in bands.” (More in our article on Tachikawa’s children.) After Hagoromo-cho’s “nebuta kids”, what kind of dancing children will come out of this town next?

The answer to the mystery: Tachikawa is a town that “makes” its dances

Back to the first question. Why are there four Tachikawa Ondo, and why do so many of Tachikawa’s dances come from elsewhere?

Half the answer that emerged from the documents is this. Tachikawa has been a town that does not just inherit dances but makes them. In 1937, the first ondo was made to put the pride of an airfield town into song. After the war, the river and woods were sung anew, and in the year of the merger, the song tried to make east, west, south and north into one circle. In the year Tachikawa Station turned a hundred, the Yoito Festival was born. One shopping street brought in nebuta on the strength of a subsidy and chanko; another closed its road and brought in a Spanish dance; an aircraft company chose hula to celebrate its hundredth birthday. Songs and festivals were created anew every time someone said, “Let’s do it.”

The other half lies in how the town came to be. Tachikawa got an airfield in 1922 and became a base town after the war. In the late 1960s and 70s housing estates went up, and in the fourteen years from 1965 to 1978, eleven city elementary schools opened. There are dances, like the lion dance at Suwa Shrine in Shibasaki, that people of the same land have carried on for 300 years. But around them were great numbers of people who arrived later. For people from elsewhere to make their own circle, they need new songs and new dances. The four ondo are not four failures. They are, I think, the traces of a town trying to remake its circle each time its people changed and its face changed.

“Tachikawa’s all fura-fura.” It is probably not an insult. It describes the temperament of the people here, who drift — fura-ri — into the circle every time a new dance arrives.

If you come to Tachikawa at the weekend, take a look at the calendar first. In spring, you can stand at the edge of the ring of 500 flamenco dancers in the street by the South Exit. In autumn, you can listen to the festival music from the free area without dressing up as a yokai. It does not matter if you can’t dance. This town’s dances were, after all, made for people who came from somewhere else.

Answer to the quiz

The answer is (A). According to the chair of the Hagoromo Nebuta Festival committee, it began when the Higashi-Tachikawa shopping street, with a Tokyo and city subsidy for shopping-street projects, held an event at which Mainoumi — through the connection of the street’s then chairman, who came from Aomori — made chanko for people. The following year a member asked whether they could bring even one nebuta from Aomori, and the first festival was held with a single figure nebuta.

Before you go

  • Dates change every year. Before you go, always check the latest announcements from the organisers and the Tachikawa Tourism and Convention Association. The association’s events list (Japanese): https://tokyo-tachikawa.org/event/
  • Tachikawa Yoito Festival: held on Sun Sun Road (North Exit of Tachikawa Station, under the Tama Monorail). In 2026, Sunday 11 October, 13:00–21:00, cancelled in stormy weather. Organised by the Tachikawa Yoito Festival Executive Committee, co-hosted by Tachikawa City and the Tachikawa Regional Culture Promotion Foundation. Practice sessions for the folk-dance procession are also announced here: https://www.tachikawa-chiikibunka.or.jp/b10-20261011/
  • Yokai Bon Odori: in the central plaza on the 2nd floor of GREEN SPRINGS (3-1 Midori-cho, Tachikawa, within walking distance of the North Exit). The area around the tower stage is ticketed, with a dress code. Dates and tickets on the official site: https://yokaibonodori.tokyo/
  • Tachikawa Flamenco: around Suzuran-dori by the South Exit of Tachikawa Station. Free; usually around the Golden Week holidays in spring. To join the street flamenco as a dancer you must apply in advance, and in some years places fill up: https://flamenco-tachikawa.tokyo
  • Hagoromo Nebuta Festival: on the Higashi-Tachikawa shopping street in Hagoromo-cho, usually in August. Check this year’s dates in the tourism association’s or the shopping street’s announcements.
  • Putting it together: Sun Sun Road, venue of the Yoito Festival, and GREEN SPRINGS beyond it are routes I walked in other articles in this feature. Azusami Tenjin-sha, where the Sunagawa Ondo was launched, I visited in the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa article.
  • From central Tokyo: take the JR Chuo Line from Shinjuku without changing. From Kanagawa, take the Nambu Line from Kawasaki to Tachikawa without changing.
  • Practical tips: Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO. Festivals get very crowded; keep an eye on children and belongings, follow the stewards’ directions, and take your rubbish home or use the bins provided. Ask before photographing dancers up close.

After the dancing, at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

A festival night uses more of your body than you expect. Repeating the same hand movements dozens of times in the ring, walking and standing for hours in the crowds — before you know it, your calves are tight as drums.

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 — the morning after a festival, or after work on a weekday.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental. Once you have taken off your yukata, you can come 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

Dance inside the ring, catch your breath outside it. That is how a festival night in Tachikawa wears on.

Cover photo: The paved plaza of GREEN SPRINGS, which becomes the venue of the Yokai Bon Odori in autumn. (Photo: 突撃二号 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

💬 ご質問がある場合はこちらからどうぞ

オンザショアのチャットで質問する（24時間受付）

レッスン内容・料金・体験のご予約など、気になることをお気軽にお尋ねください。

1

2


Warning: Attempt to read property "show_author" on false in /home/c1531448/public_html/ontheshore.jp/wp-content/themes/heal_tcd077/single.php on line 165

関連記事

PAGE TOP

TEL

体験レッスン

ご予約

質問する
ご体験予約