Tachikawa Keirin Velodrome: History, Guide and the Grand Prix’s Home

The downhill slope of sales, and 700 people at the windows

Tachikawa Keirin’s sales, 117.2 billion yen in fiscal 1992, had fallen to 16.2 billion by fiscal 2020, according to the association and city material. Attendance fell from 1.52 million in fiscal 1974 to 40,000 in fiscal 2020. Fiscal 2020 was an unusual year, with the pandemic, but the downhill slope itself had begun long before.

The city’s 2011 report records that slope honestly. The amount one person spent on betting tickets in a day at the track was 53,800 yen in fiscal 1992, but 14,000 yen in fiscal 2010, a fall of more than 70 percent. The ticket windows had kept a meticulous record of the waves of the economy and how tightly people were holding their purse strings.

The number of people standing at those windows went down the same slope. There were about 700 staff selling tickets and paying out winnings in fiscal 1992. After years of not replacing those who left, there were 295 as of 1 April 2011. From fiscal 2004 the ticket windows themselves were reduced, and employment adjustments that cut working days reached as many as nine days a year per person in the worst years. Picturing 700 people at the windows is hard from today’s quiet stands. But that number tells you that this velodrome was once also a big employer in town. The people behind those windows must have been people who lived in this town or ones nearby.

Read down the expense tables in the report, and you can see the traces of economising one by one. In fiscal 2010, the velodrome reviewed how it bought electricity following electricity-market liberalisation, and signed with a new supplier after competitive quotes; in one year that cut its electricity bill by 17 million yen, about 27 percent. The cost of printing race cards disappeared when systems were merged. The juice once handed out free to customers in the special viewing seats started to be charged for, and the purchase of sports newspapers stopped. A velodrome that poured 130 billion yen into its town, reviewing what it spends on juice. It’s not a laughing matter. Anyone who manages a household budget will recognise it.

The report also describes relations with the neighbourhood. To protect the safety and daily life of people living around the velodrome, the city gives grants to neighbourhood associations and others, and residents work with security guards and cleaners the city provides on traffic safety, crime-prevention patrols and cleaning. As attendance fell, the report says, illegal parking and littering decreased, and the area affected by nuisance shrank. If there is one thing a falling crowd makes people happy about, it is probably this.

The places selling keirin tickets spread beyond the track. According to Tachikawa City, in fiscal 1996 “Satellite Rokugo” opened as an off-track betting outlet mainly selling Tachikawa’s races, followed by outlets in Chuetsu, Mito, Futaba and Myoko. In fiscal 2010, the five satellites sold Tachikawa’s races on a total of 271 days. In the mountains of Myoko, in Niigata Prefecture far to the north, the name of Tachikawa’s bank was being called out.

Who ran the races changed, too. Up to fiscal 2006, the Tokyo Cities Revenue Business Association held five meetings a year and the city’s own keirin seven. When the association withdrew because of worsening profits, the city took on all twelve a year from fiscal 2007.

In the same period, velodromes across Japan began to disappear. According to the city’s 2011 report, of the 50 velodromes Japan once had, 45 remained. At the end of fiscal 2010, the city of Otsu withdrew from keirin with no prospect of clearing its accumulated deficit, and Otsu Biwako Velodrome was closed. It had been decided that from April 2012 Kan’onji Velodrome would become an off-track betting outlet. The 2014 edition of the report adds that Ichinomiya Velodrome closed at the end of March 2014, leaving 43 nationwide. In the 2021 material, the total is still 43.

As velodromes fell away like teeth from a comb, Tachikawa kept racing. Even in fiscal 2009, when sales fell below 20 billion yen for the first time in 35 years, since fiscal 1973, the bank did not stop. In fiscal 2013, when it hosted the Grand Prix, sales recovered to 29 billion yen. As if to show its pride, the birthplace has brought the big year-end race home again and again.

So who was sitting in those stands? The city asked its customers directly.

Hot water and toilets, in the customer survey

The 2011 report contains a sentence noting that in past surveys, more than half the visitors were men aged 60 or over who had come alone. Coming with no companion, alone, to watch the bank alone. There are not many places in a town where such people make up more than half. I feel a little affinity there. I am someone who walks around towns alone, too.

The 2014 edition of the report includes a more detailed survey. On two days, 4 and 15 September 2014, 304 people were interviewed at the main and rear gates. Attendance was 4,424 on 4 September and 6,789 on the public holiday of 15 September.

The way the results are written is strangely vivid for an administrative document. Almost all visitors were men; the women had all been brought along by their husbands. On weekdays, people aged 60 and over made up more than 80 percent. The most common request about the facilities was “please make it clean,” with specifics including video displays, Western-style toilets instead of squat ones, more places to rest, heating and air conditioning, and the provision of hot water. Hot water. What it was for is not stated. It isn’t stated, and yet I can’t help picturing backs hunched in the winter stands, slurping cup noodles.

The ratings of events at the track are interesting too. Free giveaways of fan goods scored highly, but tipster sessions scored poorly. The report guesses the reason is that customers already know keirin inside out. Nobody here comes to be taught. Everyone arrives with their own reading of the race.

One line of the survey team’s own impressions survives as well. Compared with other velodromes, many customers took time over the free-comment section, and it was striking how many had expectations of Tachikawa Keirin. Asking for hot water, writing off the tipster sessions, and still filling the comment box to the edges: these are the faces of people who have not given up on this velodrome.

Steps were also taken to draw new customers. The 2011 report says that women’s keirin was due to start the following July under the name “Girls’ Keirin.” The first class of 35 trainees was training to turn professional, and among them were some with Tachikawa as their home track. In the 2014 survey, about 60 percent said they found Girls’ Keirin “interesting.”

Having listened to its customers, the city eventually set to work on the venue itself.

A grandstand for 30,600, and the Citizens’ Hill

The city decided to rebuild the velodrome. It drew up a basic renovation plan in fiscal 2011, began work in July 2015, and in December 2016, with roughly half of the design completed, held a reopening. The city set three concepts: a velodrome loved by citizens, a velodrome that can secure stable business revenue, and a velodrome with strengthened disaster-prevention functions. The 2011 report also mentions strengthening disaster-prevention functions using the lessons of the Great East Japan Earthquake of 2011, and letting children play freely on the site on days with no racing.

The words “disaster prevention” side by side with a renovation plan for a betting venue: some may find that odd. But once you know a little about Tachikawa, it makes sense. North-west of the station lies a disaster-management base where national government bodies would gather if a major earthquake struck the capital. Wanting a velodrome with a big site to play a part in disaster prevention seems an idea very typical of this town.

The current main grandstand, according to the facilities guide on the official site, has reserved seating on floors 2 to 5: the Royal Room on the 5th floor with 18 seats, special viewing seats on the 4th floor with 446, the 3rd floor with 306, and the 2nd with 304. The 2nd floor also has a kids’ room and a wooden deck. On the ground floor there is a hot-water room and a nappy-changing table. Whether the voices that asked for hot water got through somewhere, I can’t say. But when I spotted the words “hot-water room,” I was a little bit pleased.

One of the places where those ideas took shape is the “Citizens’ Hill.” According to the official site, it was created as a hill anyone can use, along with greening work inside the grounds. Entry is free both on race days and on days when only off-track races are being sold. The gates open from 6:00 to 18:00 from April to September, and from 6:00 to 17:00 from October to March. This place is open to people who don’t bet, too.

The work continued. According to the city, phase 2 would allow the site to be divided into a racing area and an area open to citizens, depending on the size of each meeting. The plan was to build a new main-gate building, stage building, toilet building and rear-gate building, with work scheduled from February 2023 to October 2025. Here, a huge vessel built for 30,600 people is being retailored, over many years, to the dimensions of today’s life.

The town that bicycles built

Let me return to the opening question. Why did a city in ruins choose bicycles, and what did that leave the town?

Half of the answer the documents give is simple. Post-war Tachikawa lacked schools, roads, sewers and a city hall. The national government had prepared keirin as a way for local authorities to create their own revenue. The city seized it early, upgraded its facilities ahead of other velodromes, and poured more than 130 billion yen into the town. Some of the public buildings you see walking around Tachikawa Station today were built with that money.

The other half is my own guess. For a long time, at the centre of this town lay an airfield its citizens could not enter. Tachikawa was a city that could not freely use the middle of its own land. That is exactly why having a source of money it could turn with its own hands may have mattered more here than elsewhere. Outside the base fence, a 400-metre oval kept turning, and that turning gradually gave the town back to its citizens. Perhaps that reading is just a traveller’s liberty.

Let me lay out the numbers again. It opened 59th in Japan. Yet the year-end 100-million-yen race was born in this town, and 22 of 41 editions were assigned to it. Even after sales slid from their peak, even as velodromes closed one after another across the country, the bank kept turning, and its profits became libraries, schools and sewers. The latecomer has played the lead for the longest time, and more often than anyone.

Next time someone asks me what there is in Tachikawa, I think I’ll answer like this: it is the town where the year-end 100-million-yen race was born, and where that bank built libraries and schools. This town, so often called plain, has for forty years hosted the year-end race that decides Japan’s best more often than any other.

One straight ride on the Chuo Line from Shinjuku, or on the Nambu Line from Kawasaki. Even if you don’t buy a single ticket, the Citizens’ Hill is open for free. Just coming on a weekend morning to look at that 31-degree wall changes how this town looks, a little.

Quiz answer

The answer is C, about 31 degrees. According to the official facilities guide, the slope at the centre is 31 degrees, 13 minutes and 6 seconds. The straights tilt only 2 degrees, 17 minutes and 27 seconds, so the riders switch from almost flat road onto a steep wall.

Before you go

• Address: 3-32-5 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. 15 minutes on foot from JR Tachikawa Station or Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail (per the official site). Leave by the station’s North Exit and walk through the Akebonocho district.
• Free bus: on race days and some other days, about 10 minutes from in front of Tachikawa-Kita Station, or about 15 minutes from Tamagawa-Josui Station on the Seibu Line (per the official site). Buses from Tachikawa-Kita are listed as running five or six times an hour between about 10:00 and 15:00. Journey times vary with traffic and the last bus depends on the meeting, so check the official site.
• From Shinjuku: take the JR Chuo Line (Rapid) to Tachikawa with no change of trains, a ride of thirty-something minutes. From Kanagawa Prefecture, the JR Nambu Line runs from Kawasaki to Tachikawa without a change (about an hour). Use the North Exit.
• Citizens’ Hill: free entry. Open 6:00–18:00 from April to September and 6:00–17:00 from October to March (per the official site). Renovation work has been continuing on the site, so check the official site map for which areas are open.
• Betting age: by law, you must be 20 or over to buy betting tickets. The fan advice room inside has a contact point for gambling-addiction consultation (according to material from Tachikawa City’s Public Racing Department and others).
• Official site: https://www.tachikawakeirin.jp/ (race calendar, access, facilities)
• Tachikawa City’s keirin page: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/sports/1002977/index.html
• Combine with: on the way to and from the North Exit, the most natural pairing is a stroll among the public art of Faret Tachikawa. Take the monorail north to Takamatsu and Tachihi, and you’ll meet another face of Tachikawa, the town that was once all about aircraft. The walk from the station is 15 minutes each way, so allow about 30 minutes for the round trip, plus time for a breather on the hill.
• General tips: carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO for trains and the monorail, and check the race calendar on the official site before you go, since racing days vary.

After circling the oval, back to Tachikawa Station’s North Exit

The way back from the velodrome is the same 15-minute walk. Turning bank angles and prize money over in your head as you go, you find your shoulders have tensed up.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of 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, so you can walk on the hill in the morning and drop in afterwards, or come by after a day exploring the town.

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.

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, who holds Japan’s top English qualification (Eiken Grade 1) and a perfect TOEIC score and once worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and who lived in Alaska for three years, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself (visitors from abroad have even left Google reviews about the care they received in English); if you would like an English-friendly lesson, just say so when you book.

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

Further down the road back to the station, the 31-degree wall is waiting, as it does every day, for someone to race up it.

Cover photo: Riders in colourful jerseys lined up at the starting gate on the Tachikawa Keirin bank (Photo: Furmanj / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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