Tachikawa Population and Family Life: A Guide to the Town’s Future

The future of schools: a schoolyard of a thousand, and Wakabadai Elementary School

The City of Tachikawa has 19 municipal elementary schools and 9 junior high schools. Two elementary schools are no longer on the map.

Keyakidai Elementary School opened in Showa 41 (1966) and sent out 4,246 graduates in 52 years. Wakaba Elementary School opened in Showa 46 (1971) and sent out 3,257 in 47 years. Both were born alongside the building of large housing estates, and both had more than 1,000 pupils in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The two schools’ closing ceremonies were held on 3 March for Keyakidai and on 10 March for Wakaba.

Wakabadai Elementary School, made by merging the two, opened that April. The city drew up a basic concept for the new school building in March 2017 and moved ahead with the design aiming for completion in March 2021. The city records that the ceremony to mark the new building was scaled down because of the spread of the coronavirus, and that the pupils’ words of joy and their school song were presented in a video the school had made in advance. Two schools born with the housing estates were reborn as one new school.

The road to the merger was not flat. In January 2017, before the basic concept for the new building was drawn up, the city held two briefings for parents and neighbours of the two schools, attended by 40 people in total. Alongside hopes for the new building, the city records, came requests to think further about safety on the routes to school. When two schools become one, some children have a longer walk. Before it is a story about buildings, a merger is a story about the road every morning.

Then / now: a school building for three generations

The First Elementary School (Tachikawa Daiichi Elementary School), south of the station beside the woods of Suwa Shrine, has also been rebuilt. According to the city, a petition calling for the rebuilding was submitted in Heisei 15 (2003), and work began in February Heisei 25 (2013). A combined facility bringing together the school, the Shibasaki Learning Centre and more was completed, and an opening ceremony was held on 30 August Heisei 26 (2014). More than 2,000 people came to the open house that afternoon.

The city’s report preserves the words of one attendee whose family had been First Elementary graduates for three generations, hoping that the new school and learning centre would become a symbol of the community. Back then, in Meiji 3 (1870), according to the statistical yearbook, the school began as a gogakko, a local village school. Now it stands in a new building, and beyond its schoolyard the green of Suwa Shrine still spreads out. An old school swapping itself into a new building: that is exactly how time flows in this town.

School lunches, and a sumo tent

The kitchens behind school lunches are new too. To merge two ageing school-lunch central kitchens into one, the city built a new kitchen using the PFI method, which draws on private-sector funding and management know-how, and since April Heisei 25 (2013) it has been sending lunches to elementary schools. Contracting for everything from design to operation as one package, it aims for safer, tastier lunches while cutting costs by about 15%. When the city asked children at municipal elementary and junior high schools to suggest a nickname for the kitchen, 645 entries came in, and the winner was “Minna no Kururin Kitchen” (“Everybody’s Kururin Kitchen”). Kururin is the city’s mascot character.

There is also the story of an unexpected donation. The organising committee of the Tachikawa Tachihi tournament, a stop on professional sumo’s summer regional tour, gave a donation to the city, and the city’s board of education put it towards equipment for school events such as sports days. It bought 105 items that each elementary and junior high school had asked for, including tents and microphones. Not a sumo ring: tents. The wrestlers’ tour turned into shade for children’s sports days. A down-to-earth way of giving back, very like Tachikawa, I think.

Traveller’s detour quiz

With the donation from the organising committee of the Tachikawa Tachihi sumo tournament, which items does the city say the elementary and junior high schools bought?

• 1. A sumo ring for children
• (B) Tents and microphones
• (C) Giant pots for chanko-nabe, the sumo wrestlers’ stew

The answer comes near the end of this article.

Even with schools and lunches in order, a family needs a home to live in. Where are homes being added in Tachikawa now?

New homes, and a 32-storey tower by the station: the “bed town” worry

At Tachikawa Station’s North Exit, along the tracks, stands a 32-storey tower. It is Tachikawa Tacross. According to the city, it was built as the Tachikawa Station North Exit West District Type 1 Urban Redevelopment Project: on a site of about 0.7 hectares rose a building with 2 basement floors and 32 floors above ground, about 130 metres tall. Besides shops, offices and parking, it holds 319 homes.

The preparatory association was formed in October Heisei 13 (2001). The town plan was decided in Heisei 20 (2008), construction was completed on 29 July Heisei 28 (2016), and the new district opened on 4 August. From the first step, it took fifteen years. Station-front redevelopment only takes shape after eating up about as much time as it takes a child to be born and finish junior high school.

In the northwest of the city, on former base land on the border with Akishima City, land for homes has been created too. In the land readjustment project for the Akishima district of the former Tachikawa base, carried out by the Urban Renaissance Agency, 9.5 hectares lie in Tachikawa and 56.6 hectares in Akishima. (In land readjustment, kukaku seiri, landowners each give up part of their plots to make roads and parks, and receive back better-shaped plots.) The new roads and parks opened in April Heisei 29 (2017). Here too, the former airfield is being reborn as land for daily life.

A hub, or a dormitory?

Yet the city is now voicing a certain worry about the growth in homes. As the background to its study of the “Future Vision for the Tachikawa Station Area (provisional name)”, begun in 2025, the city wrote this. In recent years, more and more land has been turned over to apartment buildings, taking advantage of the convenience of the commercial district and its high floor-area ratios. If this continues, the area risks losing its role as a hub, and becoming a bed town for central Tokyo.

Tachikawa was positioned as a “business core city” in the national Capital Region Basic Plan of Showa 61 (1986), and has been nurtured as a town to ease the concentration of everything in central Tokyo. It is Tama’s number one “daytime town”, with 13% more people present by day than living there at night. It would be a waste for its station front to become a place people only come back to sleep. Add residents while keeping hold of places to work and places to play. The city’s worry is the kind only a successful town has.

The drawing-up of the Future Vision began with a symposium in October 2025, and the first working group is scheduled for 28 October 2026 (according to the city’s page). It has no shape yet. But in the text on the background to the study there is one line not to be missed. Tachikawa sits halfway between Tokyo Station and Haneda Airport on one side and the nature of Mount Fuji, Mount Takao and Okutama on the other. So, the city thinks, it can play the role of a gateway, a front door. (More on this in the station-area article.)

Change is planned on the tracks to the south as well. In October 2025, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Kunitachi City, Tachikawa City and JR East held briefings on four days on the draft town plans for raising the Nambu Line onto a viaduct between Yaho and Tachikawa stations, together with related roads and a station plaza at Nishi-Kunitachi Station. The time spent waiting at level crossings should, in time, shrink.

Tachikawa in the “most wanted places to live” ranking: 7th for “likely to develop”

So how does Tachikawa look from outside? In the “SUUMO Ranking of Towns People Want to Live In 2026, Greater Tokyo” by Recruit, the company behind the property site SUUMO, Tachikawa came 17th. In the previous year’s 2025 edition it was 15th, its best ever. In the 2024 edition it was 22nd. The ranking totals the answers of 9,000 people aged 20 to 49 living in Tokyo and four neighbouring prefectures, and Tachikawa’s score includes the scores of Tachikawa-Kita and Tachikawa-Minami stations on the Tama Monorail. With even the monorail stations called in as reinforcements, Tachikawa Station must feel well supported.

Look at the numbers a little more closely, and Tachikawa’s character emerges. Ranking only stations in Tokyo, Tachikawa is 9th. Ranking only the votes of people living in Tokyo, it is 6th. In the ranking of municipalities people want to live in, Tachikawa City came 32nd in Greater Tokyo and 16th in the votes of Tokyo residents.

The interesting part is the ranking by each kind of appeal. Among municipalities people want to live in, by the share who think “the town is likely to develop from now on”, Tachikawa City came 7th in Greater Tokyo. The places above it include brand-new towns such as Inzai in Chiba Prefecture and Tsukubamirai in Ibaraki Prefecture. Tachikawa, with its long history of development, is still seen as a town with its “future” ahead of it. On three measures, “easy to get to various places by train and bus”, “seems easy to get to particular places such as work or school” and “convenient, with the facilities needed for daily life around the station”, it came 4th each time.

In the same survey’s “hidden gem towns”, Tachikawa came 23rd. Typical rents were listed as 83,000 yen for a single person’s 1K or 1DK, and 150,000 yen for a family’s 2LDK, 3K or 3DK. (In Japanese flat listings, the number is the number of rooms, and K, DK and LDK mean kitchen, dining-kitchen and living-dining-kitchen.) Seeing those figures, I quietly closed the table. Whether to call it a hidden gem is up to the reader’s wallet.

Neighbours from across the sea

Tachikawa’s pull is not only a domestic one. The city’s foreign residents grew from 3,859 in January 2017 to 6,591 in January 2026. An increase of more than 70% in nine years. By nationality, Vietnamese went from 142 to 810, Nepalese from 127 to 539, Myanmar nationals from 6 to 162. Chinese residents, at 2,459, are still the largest group.

The city’s website has machine translation that can switch it into well over a hundred languages, and its page “For Foreign People” lists information on daily life and Japanese-language classes, with the readings of the kanji printed above them. Tachikawa is slowly redrawing the map of where its residents come from.

For people coming from abroad on a trip, too, Tachikawa is an easier town to read than you might expect. As the city itself writes, it sits between Tokyo Station and Haneda Airport on one side and Mount Fuji and Mount Takao on the other. It is one ride on the Chuo Line from Shinjuku, and reached without changing trains on the Nambu Line from Kawasaki in Kanagawa. Right beside the high-rise redevelopment buildings, Showa-era housing estates and the sacred woods of an Edo-period village shrine stand side by side. Places where you can see a town’s time stacked in so many layers are not common, even in Tokyo.

The answer to the mystery: the far side of the peak

In the end, the reason the fiscal 2015 prophecy missed by 40,000 people is that people kept coming. A projection stretches past trends into the future. But Tachikawa had the power to rewrite those trends a little every year. Station-front redevelopment, new neighbourhoods on former base land, Tama’s busiest daytime crowds. People try to live where there is work, shopping and fun.

Even so, the 2028 peak may still come. Fewer children are being born, and some people in their 20s move on into the centre. Free school lunches carry the proviso of a review from fiscal 2027. Daycare waiting lists fell once to 8, then rose again to 45. The future is not yet decided, even inside the planning documents.

Those planning documents can be read in the city information corner on the third floor of the city hall and in libraries. The city’s page says the booklet of the Fifth Long-Term Comprehensive Plan’s basic concept can be bought for 1,100 yen, and the first-term basic plan for 4,000 yen. The blueprint for a town’s future, for the price of a few lunches. In drawing up the plan, the city says, it also gathered views through workshops with high-school students and a questionnaire for junior high pupils. In a town where children aged 14 and under will fall below one in ten by 2065, the children who may become that one in ten are already taking part in the design.

From the 1,065 people of Edo-period Shibasaki Village to 187,440. How the road continues past the peak will be decided by the people starting to live in Tachikawa now.

Quiz answer

The answer is (B), tents and microphones. According to the Tachikawa City Board of Education, with the donation from the organising committee of the summer-tour Tachikawa Tachihi sumo tournament, the schools bought 105 items of equipment that each elementary and junior high school had requested, including tents and microphones, and use them at school events such as sports days.

Before you go

• Reading the city’s plans: the Fifth Long-Term Comprehensive Plan, the Third Comprehensive Strategy and the Fifth Yume-sodate Tachikawa Kodomo 21 Plan can be read on the city’s website (in Japanese). The booklets can be viewed at the city information corner on the third floor of the main city hall building and at each library (according to the City of Tachikawa). City hall is at 1156-9 Izumicho, Tachikawa.
  • Comprehensive plan: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisei/sesaku/1006565/index.html
  • Comprehensive strategy: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisei/sesaku/1006558/1006568.html
  • Kodomo 21 Plan: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisei/sesaku/1024458/1024459/1024918.html
• Child-rearing counters: the counters for daycare, after-school care and so on are on the ground floor of the Kodomo Mirai Center (3-2-26 Nishikicho, Tachikawa). A 13-minute walk from JR Tachikawa Station, 7 minutes from JR Nishi-Kunitachi Station (according to the City of Tachikawa). Check opening hours and procedures on the city’s page: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kosodate/m-kosodate/1026214.html
• Latest on school lunch fees, medical subsidies and waiting lists: schemes and numbers change every fiscal year. School lunch fees: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kosodate/gakko/1004248/1004283/1021536.html ; waiting-list numbers: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kosodate/m-kosodate/1004946/1005094/1005111.html
• Walking to see the town’s changes: Tachikawa Tacross stands along the tracks at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station. According to Suwa Shrine’s official directions, the shrine is a 10-minute walk from JR Tachikawa Station, and the First Elementary School is beside its woods. If you want to walk the parks around the station and the traces of Showa-era housing estates, combine this with this series’ articles on parks and on the Oni Park at the South Exit (Oni Park) for a half-day outing.
• From central Tokyo and Kanagawa: from Shinjuku, the JR Chuo Line with no change of trains. From Kawasaki in Kanagawa Prefecture, the JR Nambu Line brings you to Tachikawa Station without changing.
• Information in other languages: the City of Tachikawa’s website can be switched into many languages by machine translation. The page for foreign residents is https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/gaikoku/index.html (Tachikawa City, For Foreign People).
• General tips: carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO for trains and buses, and check opening days on the official sites before you go.

After thinking about the town’s future, at Tachikawa Station’s North Exit

Walk the town while reading population tables and planning documents, and though your head is busy, your body somehow stiffens. Numbers settle on your shoulders.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the third floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店). It is a hot yoga studio with heated lava-stone floors, and it also offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. Before the daycare drop-off or on the way home from work, there is time to drop in.

For first-timers there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and mat rental included, so you can come empty-handed.

Pregnant guests cannot join 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, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself. She holds Eiken Grade 1 and a perfect TOEIC score, once worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and lived in Alaska for three years. If you don’t speak Japanese, just mention it when you book.

• On the Shore: https://ontheshore.jp/
• Book a trial lesson: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

As one of the 187,440, I breathe out slowly on the third floor of a building by the station. Wherever the town’s peak turns out to be, the peak in my own body, at least, I can get over today.

Cover photo: Tachikawa Tacross beyond the end of a Tachikawa Station platform, its 32-storey residential tower rising into a clear autumn sky (Photo: Syced / CC0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

• Tachikawa Air Raids: WWII History and a Memorial Walk Guide
• Tachikawa Autumn Leaves Guide: Ginkgo, Zelkova and Where to Walk
• Tachikawa Base Town History: Cola Bottles, Yuming, the Laundry Gate
• Tachikawa Air Base History Walk: The Sunagawa Struggle and After
• Tachikawa Sento Guide: Public Baths, Their History and Bath Etiquette
• Tachikawa Disaster Base and Life Safety Learning Center: A Guide
• Tachikawa Bridges Walk: ‘Nameless Bridge’ to a Double-Deck Crossing
• Tachikawa Cinema City Guide: Tokyo’s First Multiplex and Its Big Sound
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• Tachikawa Cycling Guide: Showa Kinen Park’s 14 km and the Tama River
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• Tachikawa History Walk: Famous People, from Seiji Ozawa to a Comet
• Tachikawa History Walk: Famous People Who Passed Through the Town
• Tachikawa Public Art Walk: A Guide to the 109 Works of Faret Tachikawa
• Tachikawa Farms Guide: Farm Stands, Harvest Days and Tokyo’s Fields
• Tachikawa History: Japan’s Firsts, from Electric Cars to Sazae-san
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• Tachikawa Walk: Fusai-ji Temple’s National Treasure and Suwa Shrine
• Tachikawa Business Guide: Where West Tokyo Works and Starts Up
• Tachikawa Culture Guide: Ballet, Ice, Anime and Art Near the Station
• Tachikawa’s Green Future: Zero Carbon, Farmland and Springs Guide
• Tachikawa for Foreign Visitors: Haneda Bus, Things to Do, Future
• Tama Monorail Extension: When It Opens and Tachikawa’s Future Guide
• Tachikawa and Tokyo’s Next Big Earthquake: Disaster Base Guide
• Showa Kinen Park Guide: The Future of Tachikawa’s Unfinished Park
• Tachikawa Station Redevelopment: A Guide to the Future Station Area
• Tachikawa’s Next Decade: Tachihi, GREEN SPRINGS and a New Hotel Guide
• Tachikawa GREEN SPRINGS Guide: Goats, a Rooftop River, Things to Do
• Tachikawa Travel Guide: Things to Do, Walks and History West of Tokyo
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• Tachikawa History Walk: How a Mulberry Village Became Tama’s Hub
• Tachikawa Airfield History: The 2:12 a.m. Flight to London, 1937
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• Tachikawa Childhood History: Candy Shops, a Base Christmas, Showa Kids
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• Showa Kinen Park Guide: Komorebi Village, Japanese Garden and Bonsai
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• Tachikawa Fireworks Festival Guide: History, Tips and Things to Do
• Akishima Day Trip from Tachikawa: Whale Fossil, Wisteria and History
• Fussa Day Trip from Tachikawa: Yokota Air Base History, Route 16 Walk
• Fussa Sake Brewery Walk: Day Trip from Tachikawa, Water and History
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• Mount Takao Day Trip from Tachikawa: Hiking Guide, History and Forest
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• Kokubunji Walk from Tachikawa: Otaka-no-Michi Springs and History
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• Mount Mitake Day Trip from Tachikawa: Wolf Shrine, Valley Walk Guide
• Ome Day Trip from Tachikawa: Showa Retro Walk, Things to Do, History
• Tachikawa Walk: Nekawa Green Path to the Tama River, a Riverside Guide
• Tachikawa Cat-Return Shrine Guide: History, Ema and Suitengu
• Tachikawa Night Views and Mount Fuji at Dawn: A Walking Guide
• Tachikawa at Night: Bar Alleys, Black Markets and Cinema History Walk
• Tachikawa Ramen and Udon Guide: Ramen Square and Noodle History
• Tachikawa vs. Central Tokyo: Why the West Side Wins on Space and Sky
• Tachikawa Old Villages Walk: History Guide, Shibasaki to Nishisuna
• Tachikawa Oni Park Guide: A Red Demon Slide and Trains for Kids
• Tachikawa Parks Guide: Things to Do Beyond Showa Kinen Park, a Walk
• Tachikawa Place Names: A History Walk Through Its Town-Name Origins
• Tachikawa Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum: Free Guide and History
• Tachikawa on a Rainy Day: Indoor Things to Do, a Local Guide
• Tachikawa History Museum Guide: Local History and Folklore, Free
• Tachikawa Cherry Blossoms Guide: Where to See Sakura, and the History
• Tachikawa Schools Walk: History of Night Classes, Bells, Antarctica
• Tachikawa Filming Locations Guide: Anime Pilgrimage and TV Dramas
• Tachikawa Silk History Walk: Japan’s No.1 Mulberry Village, Sunagawa
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• Showa Kinen Park, Tachikawa: A Walking Guide to Highlights and History
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• Tachikawa Souvenirs Guide: What to Buy, from Tokyo Sake to Paper
• Tachikawa Sports Guide: Things to Do for Fans, Runners and Walkers
• Tachikawa Station Guide: The History Walk of Tama’s Busiest Station
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• Tachikawa Tachihi History Walk: Aircraft, a Beach and Things to Do
• Tachikawa History: The Samurai Clan Behind the City’s Name, a Walk
• Tama Monorail from Tachikawa: A Guide to Views, Mt. Fuji and History
• Tachikawa Tama River History Walk: Floods, Ferries and Bridges
• Tachikawa Walk: Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa History Guide
• Tachikawa Udo Guide: History of Tokyo’s Underground White Vegetable
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• Tachikawa Water History: Where the Tap Water Comes From, and Wells
• Tachikawa History: Why Tokyo’s First IKEA and Cinema Complex Came Here
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• Tachikawa Yagawa Green Space Walk: Springs, Hake Cliffs and History
• Tachikawa from Yokota Air Base: A Weekend Guide and Things to Do

All Tachikawa Walks (English)