Tachikawa History Walk: How a Mulberry Village Became Tama’s Hub

Tachikawa’s history, from Edo villages to the “Capital of the Sky” airfield, the US base and its return, and today’s disaster base. Sourced timeline included.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Until the middle of the Meiji era, Tachikawa was part of Kanagawa Prefecture. Japan’s first scheduled passenger flight took off not from Haneda but from Tachikawa. And on the day the capital faces a catastrophe, the place the national government’s disaster headquarters falls back to, as a last resort, is also in Tachikawa.

Even people who live in Tachikawa (立川) rarely know any of this. Ask a Tokyoite about the city and the answer usually stalls at “on the Chuo Line, somewhere out west.” Locals, too, tend to speak of their own town a little apologetically. There’s a department store by the station. There’s a big park. And then… the sentence trails off.

I was one of them. When I wrote down everything I knew about Tachikawa, the list ran to three lines. The monorail. Showa Kinen Park. The station is big. For someone who calls himself a traveller, it was an embarrassing inventory.

But follow the city’s official timeline line by line and the place changes its face entirely. Until the mid-Meiji period, this was a village of fields, mulberry and coppice woodland. In a little over a hundred years it became the transport and commercial centre of the Tama area, the broad western part of Tokyo Metropolis beyond the 23 central city wards. The city’s official profile calls Tachikawa Station “a key transport hub of the Tama area” and the district around it “the commercial centre of the Tama area.” How did a village of fields and mulberry become the centre of Tama in a single century? I took that question with me and set out to walk through the eras one at a time.

First, the question people ask most: when was Tachikawa City founded? The town of Tachikawa became a city on 1 December 1940 (Showa 15). It took its present shape on 1 May 1963 (Showa 38), when it absorbed the town of Sunagawa in Kitatama District. But dates alone explain nothing. The real story of how this place became “Tachikawa” begins much earlier.

Tachikawa’s history begins on a flat terrace

The city sums up its own topography in one word: “flat.” The Tama River runs to the south, the Tamagawa Aqueduct to the north, and between them the edge of the Musashino Plateau spreads out with barely a ripple. The highest point in the city, around 4-chome Nishisuna-cho, is 124.7 metres above sea level; the lowest, around 6-chome Nishiki-cho, is 64.9 metres. There are some 60 metres between them, yet the only place a walker meets anything like a real slope is along the southern bluff where the terrace drops toward the Tama River. One of the city’s walking-course guides describes an artificial mound in Sunagawa, about 10 metres tall, as “Tachikawa’s only mountain.” Not many cities can claim a monopoly on mountains with 10 metres of earth.

Please remember this flatness. It will come back again and again.

People have lived here for a very long time. At the Mukogo site, which straddles Nishiki-cho and Hagoromo-cho, traces of human activity date back to the Paleolithic, some 13,000 years ago. Remains of Jomon-period settlements have been confirmed at the Owada site in Shibasaki-cho and at the Mukogo site. Settlements from the Nara and Heian periods turned up at the Owada and Shimo-Owada sites in Shibasaki-cho and at the Dainoshita site in Fujimi-cho. All of these are in the south of the city, close to the Tama River. People seem always to have chosen the edge of the terrace, near the river’s water. The broad terrace to the north remained, for a very long time, an uninhabitable plain. The reason will become clear a little later.

The first written line of local history belongs to a shrine. Suwa Shrine in Shibasaki-cho says it welcomed its deity from Suwa in Shinshu (today’s Nagano Prefecture) in Konin 2, that is, in 811. The Edo-period gazetteer Shinpen Musashi Fudokiki is said to record that the deity was enshrined in this village on the 27th day of the 7th month of Konin 2. That is more than a thousand years before the Kobu Railway built a station in Tachikawa. In Kencho 4 (1252), Hachiman Shrine was built in Shibasaki-cho. Tachikawa’s old time lies layered on the south side of today’s station, in Shibasaki-cho.

Where does the name “Tachikawa” come from? Five theories

In medieval times there was a warrior family here called the Tachikawa clan. They are said to have belonged to one of the Musashi Shichito, the “Seven Bands of Musashi” warrior groups, and their residence is thought to have stood around today’s Fusai-ji Temple. According to tradition, in Bunna 2 (1353) the clan founded Fusai-ji as their family temple, inviting the Zen monk Motsugai Kaju from Kencho-ji in Kamakura. In the temple grounds stands a six-sided stone lantern-pillar, a sekito, inscribed with the date Enbun 6 (1361). It is the only National Treasure in Tachikawa. The city writes that Fusai-ji once published Buddhist scriptures known as the “Fusai-ji editions” and was a centre of Buddhist culture in the region. Six hundred years ago, on a terrace above the Tama River, this was a temple that printed books.

Did the name Tachikawa come from the Tachikawa clan? I had assumed so. But read the city’s official profile and the story is not so simple. The Board of Education’s booklet Tachikawa no Chimei (Place Names of Tachikawa) lists five theories. One says the Tama River was called “the river of the sun’s warp,” tate-kawa. Another says the name came from a residence, tachi, at Fusai-ji. A third traces it to the fast rapids of the Tama River, tagichi-kawa. A fourth says it meant “the eastern river.” The fifth says the Tachikawa clan lived here. The city then concludes, in effect: none of these theories is conclusive, and the truth is not known.

I rather admire a city hall that states, officially, that it does not know where its own name comes from. I also notice that three of the five theories point to the Tama River. From the level of its very name, this town stood on a river and a terrace.

Medieval Tachikawa was also a battlefield. The city’s timeline records that in Kyotoku 4 (1455) and Eisho 1 (1504), two battles were fought on the riverbed of the Tama, the Battles of Tachikawara. In the winter of Tensho 14 (1586), a wildfire on the Musashino plain burned Suwa Shrine’s buildings and its old records. According to the shrine’s own history, the main hall was rebuilt in Kanbun 10 (1670). For some eighty years, the shrine lived on as a burned-out site.

Even so, the Tachikawa of that era was still only a small dot on the map. The dot became a line only under the Tokugawa shogunate.

Edo-era Shibasaki and Sunagawa: the long village the aqueduct built

In the early Edo period, Tokugawa Ieyasu put the Ome and Itsukaichi highways in order, and in Keicho 5 (1600) work began on the Koshu Kaido, the great western highway. When a highway comes through, people and goods start to move. The land of today’s Tachikawa held two main villages: Shibasaki on the southern terrace, and what would become Sunagawa on the plateau to the north.

Shibasaki in the south was an old village centred on Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine. The city writes that the post of village headman alternated year by year between the Suzuki and Nakajima families. In Bunka 6 (1809), the shogunate official and man of letters Ota Nanpo visited the Nakajima residence. Many chest-of-drawers makers lived along the road running from the great zelkova tree to Fusai-ji; it was called “Tansu Yokocho” (Chest-of-Drawers Lane) and flourished as Shibasaki’s main street. The city’s timeline also notes that the lion dance of Suwa Shrine began around the Genroku era (1688–1704).

The north was another matter altogether. In the Keicho era (1596–1615), Murano San’emon, a farmer from Kishi village (today’s Musashimurayama City), began clearing land for Sunagawa Shinden, the “new fields” of Sunagawa. But up on the plateau, the groundwater lies deep. The city writes that many branch channels were drawn from the Tamagawa Aqueduct onto the Musashino Plateau, which had been uninhabitable because its water table was so low. Earlier I said you would learn why the northern plateau long remained a plain. The answer is water.

What transformed that northern plateau was the Tamagawa Aqueduct (Tamagawa Josui), dug in Joo 2 (1653) by the brothers Tamagawa Shoemon and Seiemon. The city writes that they carved some 43 kilometres from Hamura to Yotsuya Okido, the western gate of Edo, across a height difference of about 92 metres, in roughly eight months. The aqueduct opened the following year, Joo 3 (1654), and the Sunagawa branch channel that drew water from it opened in Meireki 3 (1657).

When water came, a village followed. Sunagawa was laid out deliberately along the Itsukaichi Kaido road and the branch channel, its plots lined up in long, narrow strips. The city’s history newsletter reports that locals called this sideways-stretched village “Niri Hatcho, Naga Shinden,” roughly “the long new fields, two ri and eight cho” (a ri being about four kilometres). The name Sunagawa, “sand river,” is said to come from the Zanbori River that runs through the city, whose bed was bare sand and stone. In the land survey of Genroku 2 (1689), the village had 175 households. Against some 229 cho of fields there were more than 73 cho of pampas-grass meadow. It was still half wilderness.

What amuses me is that this village was, for a time, a falconry ground of the Owari domain. In Kan’ei 10 (1633), Sunagawa Shinden became hunting land for the lords of Owari, whose castle was in Nagoya. The lord of Nagoya had his hunting grounds on a plateau in Tama. The road patrolled by the falconry officials was, it is said, one that ordinary villagers were not allowed to use, and the city’s walking guide goes out of its way to add that “the hawk road” was once used as a byword for officials’ arrogance. Three hundred years on, the grudge is still in the records.

In the Kyoho era (1716–1736), under the shogun Tokugawa Yoshimune’s policy of opening new farmland, several more new-field settlements were cleared around Sunagawa. In Genbun 1 (1736), Sunagawa Shinden became Sunagawa village. The following year, Genbun 2 (1737), the Shibasaki branch channel opened too. Its water served as drinking water in the part of Shibasaki up on the terrace and as paddy water below the bluff. The old village in the south and the new one in the north were now joined by a single aqueduct.

Even into the Meiji era, Sunagawa remained farming country. The city’s museum writes that Sunagawa developed through the Meiji period around the production of mulberry seedlings, silkworm raising and weaving. In Ansei 7 (1860), Kokage Shrine, dedicated to the god of sericulture, was brought from Hitachi Province (today’s Ibaraki) into the grounds of Azusami Tenjin Shrine in Sunagawa. That is where my phrase “village of mulberry” at the start of this article comes from.

So what happened to this quiet farming village? The first change arrived along iron rails.

1889: a station arrives, and Shibasaki has become Tachikawa

At the start of the Meiji era, Shibasaki and Sunagawa went through a sequence that makes us tilt our heads today. In Meiji 1 (1868) they were placed under Nirayama Prefecture; in Meiji 4 (1871), under Kanagawa Prefecture. Nirayama Prefecture was governed from Nirayama, on the Izu Peninsula. The three Tama districts were transferred from Kanagawa to Tokyo Prefecture only in Meiji 26 (1893). Before it became “Tachikawa, Tokyo,” the area changed prefecture twice in a quarter of a century.

In Meiji 3 (1870), a local school was opened at Fusai-ji. It was the forerunner of today’s Tachikawa Municipal Daiichi Elementary School. The temple became a school, and in time a village office too. In Meiji 14 (1881), Shibasaki village changed its name to Tachikawa village. The timeline gives no reason. But this was the first time the name “Tachikawa” appeared on a map as the name of a village.

In Meiji 22 (1889), the Kobu Railway, today’s JR Chuo Line, opened, and Tachikawa got a station. In the same year, under the new municipal system, Tachikawa became an independent village. Its village office, it is said, was set up in a borrowed space: Shingen-an, a sub-temple of Fusai-ji. The administration of a modern village began in one room of a centuries-old temple.

What was the area around the brand-new station like? A clue survives in a single poem. In Meiji 39 (1906), the poet Wakayama Bokusui, then a student at Waseda, stepped off at Tachikawa Station on his way to Okutama with a friend and rested at a teahouse. He wrote:

立川の驛の古茶屋さくら樹の　もみぢのかげに見送りし子よ

(Roughly: “At the old teahouse by Tachikawa Station, in the shade of the cherry tree’s autumn leaves — the girl who saw me off.”)

There was a teahouse under a cherry tree by the station. The city writes that a stone monument bearing this poem was erected by volunteers in Showa 25 (1950) to mark the city’s tenth anniversary. To someone like me, who knows only the station of department stores and pedestrian decks, a little station where cherry leaves turn red sounds like a tale from a faraway country.

One line of track was not the end of it. The Ome Railway arrived in 1894 (Meiji 27), the Nambu Railway in 1929 (Showa 4) and the Itsukaichi Railway in 1930 (Showa 5), one after another, all into Tachikawa Station. The city names the opening of the Kobu Railway as one reason Tachikawa grew into the transport and economic centre of Tama. A station where lines converge from every direction draws people just by existing. In Meiji 34 (1901), Tokyo Prefectural Second Middle School, today’s Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School, opened.

Still, Meiji-era Tachikawa was a village. In Meiji 43 (1910), the silk-reeling industry in Sunagawa closed. Electricity reached Tachikawa village in Taisho 4 (1915), and the telephone in Taisho 10 (1921). From Taisho 9 (1920), Tokyo Prefecture’s agricultural experiment station moved here from Nakano. Little by little, the village was becoming the place that caught Tokyo’s overflow to the west.

And then, in the autumn of Taisho 10, a decision was made that would change the village’s future completely.