Tachikawa Libraries Guide: Raccoon Dogs, Lucky Cats, Local History

Tachikawa’s nine libraries each have an animal emblem. How a city with no library of its own became one of Japan’s top borrowers, and how to use them.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Each of Tachikawa’s public libraries has its own animal. Shibasaki has a tanuki, the Japanese raccoon dog. Kamisuna has a maneki-neko, the beckoning lucky cat. Nishisuna has a cow. Tamagawa has a medaka, the tiny rice fish of Japanese ponds and paddies.

Open the pages for the nine libraries one by one on the city library website, and each has a small symbol, with a note on where it came from. The tanuki, because many lived around here in the days when this place was called Tachikawa Village. The cow, because cattle were once kept near the library. The libraries’ emblems have become an album of the land’s memories.

While looking into the history of this town’s libraries, I came up against a contradiction. The city’s basic plan for its libraries opens like this: “Tachikawa was once one of the few towns in the Tama area to have a library.” (Tachikawa (立川) is a city in the Tama area, the western half of Tokyo beyond the 23 central wards.) Yet a little further on, the same document says the city’s own library service was created by ordinance only in 1978. Why did a town that had a library from just after the war take thirty years to get one of its own? And how is it that this late starter now keeps lending more books per head than almost any other city of its size in Japan? What happened in between?

Where Tachikawa’s libraries began: the Metropolitan Tachikawa Library and “a town with a library”

In January 1947, in the turmoil just after the war, the Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa Library was opened in Tachikawa. The official history of the Tokyo Metropolitan Library lists them side by side: Metropolitan Tachikawa Library opened in January 1947; Metropolitan Ome Library opened in March.

There is a small mystery here. The city’s basic plan calls the Tachikawa library the second in the Tama area, after Ome. If you trust the dates in the metropolitan history, Tachikawa was two months earlier. I did not find a document that settles which came first. If you are from Tachikawa, this is the moment to bring out the metropolitan history.

The city plan describes those days like this. In the Tama area, which had almost no cultural facilities, the two metropolitan libraries shone as sources of culture. Students and people with a hunger for culture came to the Tachikawa library from the towns and villages around. For the people of Tachikawa, having a library in their city was a joy, and also a source of pride. Quite a passionate passage, for an official planning document.

Where was that metropolitan library? According to the plan, for about 20 years it was housed in the Tachikawa City Community Hall in the Suwa woods in Shibasaki-cho. In 1968 it moved into the Metropolitan Social Education Hall, newly built in Nishiki-cho 6-chome. In May 1987 the Metropolitan Tama Library opened; according to Tokyo’s records, it was at 6-3-1 Nishiki-cho, Tachikawa, inside the Tama Education Centre. In 2009 the “Tokyo Magazine Bank”, a service specialising in magazines, opened there.

Then, in January 2017, the Metropolitan Tama Library moved to Izumi-cho in the neighbouring city of Kokubunji. According to Tokyo’s documents, its floor space grew from 4,351 to 8,972 square metres, and its storage capacity from 1.03 million to 2.85 million volumes. The reasons were an ageing building, overflowing stacks and too few reading seats. For almost seventy years after the war, the metropolitan library lived in Tachikawa; then, finding the place too cramped, it moved to the next city. Seen from Tachikawa, it was rather like a big relative who had been lodging with you finding a larger house and moving out.

On the former site of the Tama Education Centre, a metropolitan “Challenge School”, Tachikawa Midori High School, opened in 2025. I told the school’s story in the feature’s article on schools. Where books once stood, young people now come to learn.

So what was the City of Tachikawa itself doing all that time?

The mobile library “Ozora-go” and 6,600 signatures: how the city library was born

The city plan traces the post-war history of libraries in Tama with care. Until the mid-1960s, every town and village was busy with roads, water supply and schools, and very few treated libraries as their own job. Libraries were thought of, if anything, as the business of the prefecture.

What changed the current, the plan says, was a 1963 report by the Japan Library Association, known as the “Chusho Report” — the report on small and medium-sized cities. Its idea was that small and medium public libraries, close to the citizens, are what public libraries really are. At the time, huge housing estates were going up one after another in Tama, and new residents were raising their voices for libraries. Neighbouring Hino City began its library service with nothing but mobile library vans, showing that a library is not a building but the function and organisation that brings materials to citizens. When the Tokyo government announced subsidies for construction and book purchases in 1970, 13 cities and 2 towns that had no library got one between 1971 and 1975.

Tachikawa, with its metropolitan library, fell a little behind here. I imagine that having a fine library close at hand may actually have taken away the urgency of building one of its own. The plan does not go that far.

It did not sit on its hands, though. The town of Sunagawa, before it merged with Tachikawa, had long had a reading room in its community hall. Tachikawa started running a mobile library van in 1968, set up a reading room in the Central Community Hall in 1971, and added one in the Sunagawa community hall in 1973.

And then the citizens moved. In February 1975 the “Association to Build Tachikawa’s Libraries” was formed, and in June a petition calling for a city library was submitted to the city council with 6,600 signatures. A petition also came from a federation of children’s associations in the Nishi-Sunagawa district, and a request from residents of Wakaba-cho. The petition was adopted; the city set up a library planning council, and on its report adopted a “Basic Plan for Library Administration” in December 1977. In July 1978 the library ordinance came into force, and the Tachikawa City Library began its life.

It is rather fun that the documents wobble over which branch opened first. The city plan says the service began with the opening of the Nishisuna Library. But in the facilities table in the library’s annual report, the Saiwai Library opened on 1 July 1978 and the Nishisuna Library on 11 July. Both were officially established on 1 July. So which was first? The two libraries still seem to be politely deferring to each other over those ten days.

What followed is told best by numbers. According to the plan, loans in 1975, in the community-hall days, were about 100,000. By 1979 they were about 700,000, and in 1981 they passed the million mark at 1.04 million. Ten times in six years. You can picture citizens who had been kept waiting rushing in all at once to borrow books.

Until all eight district libraries were in place, the gaps in the network were filled by a mobile library. The plan records its name: the mobile library Ozora-go (大空号), “the Big Sky”. The book van of an airfield town was named after the sky. The documents do not say why, but give the people of Tachikawa something to name, and I suppose the first thing they do is look up. Ozora-go was retired after the Central Library opened in 1995 and the network was complete. In 1997 the library council issued a report “on the reuse of the mobile library van and its books”. Even a book van that had done its job had its next destination debated.

Then: books came in a van to the housing estates and the open squares.

Now: Tachikawa has nine libraries, and in the 2025 fiscal year more than 1.42 million items were borrowed. A town that once waited for the book van now has nine places to go and fetch its books.

The nine emblems: raccoon dog, lucky cat, cow and rice fish

The nine libraries were born in different years, sit in different buildings and are good at different things. Let us walk through them in turn, together with the stories behind their emblems.

Nishisuna Library opened in 1978. It stands west of the Itsukaichi Kaido road, in a complex shared with the city’s western branch office and the Nishisuna Learning Hall. Its emblem is a cow: livestock farming once thrived around here, and cattle were kept near the library. This library has a “Special Collection Corner: Aircraft and Airfields”, kept since it opened because the library is close to the site of the old Tachikawa Airfield and to the US Yokota Air Base. The library’s guide says the collection reflects a history in which the airfield drove Tachikawa’s growth, while the presence of the base also brought damage from air raids and more. It has gathered about 300 books on pre-war civil aircraft, the old Imperial Japanese forces, the Self-Defense Forces and US forces’ aircraft, and on the SDF’s Camp Tachikawa and the US Yokota Air Base. On land where cows once grazed, you read about aeroplanes.

Saiwai Library also opened in 1978, attached to the Kobushi Kaikan hall, three minutes’ walk from Sunagawa-Nanaban Station on the Tama Monorail. Its emblem is the sun, with the wish that it be a library that makes you bright and cheerful every day. It has the smallest total collection of the nine, but its guide says that if the book you want is not on the shelf, it will be brought from another library in the city or from the metropolitan library. Behind the small library is a big net.

Tamagawa Library opened in 1979, on the ground floor of a metropolitan housing block squeezed between the Shin-Okutama Bypass and the Tama River. It has a Japanese-style tatami reading room and a terrace with benches. Its emblem is the medaka. The wish is that, like the “school of rice fish” in the famous Japanese children’s song “Medaka no Gakko”, it be a place of learning where everyone from children to adults gathers. This library has a “Special Collection Corner: Records of the Air Raids”. In 1945 Tachikawa was bombed at least 13 times between 16 February and 2 August, and more than 330 people were killed. Before dawn on 4 April, a bomb hit the air-raid shelter on Sanchu-zaka slope in Fujimi-cho, killing 42 people. As the library nearest to Sanchu-zaka, it holds about 150 books on the air raids on open shelves and about 600 in the stacks. The library with the little-fish emblem is entrusted with the town’s heaviest memory. (For more, see our article on the Tachikawa air raids.)

Takamatsu Library opened on 28 June 1980. It opened in the season when hydrangeas bloom, so the hydrangea became its emblem. Easy to follow. It is on the third floor of the building it shares with the Takamatsu Learning Hall, a bright glass-walled floor. Because the “Cinema-dori Shopping Street”, named after Tachikawa’s first cinema, the Tachikawa Kinema, is nearby, it has a permanent “BOOK & CINEMA Corner” that shelves the latest films alongside the books they were based on. The library is carrying on the memory of a cinema town on its shelves. (A shotengai, by the way, is a local shopping street; for Tachikawa’s film history see our Cinema City article.)

Nishiki Library opened in 1985. Its emblem is the zelkova (keyaki), the official tree of Tachikawa City — partly because a large zelkova once stood near the library, and partly because until the Central Library was built, this was the main library. It has a paperback corner of historical novels where you can meet the samurai heroes of Japanese fiction, such as Ryoma and Onihei.

Wakaba Library opened in 1986, attached to the Wakaba Kaikan hall, surrounded by great zelkova trees and greenery. Its emblem is a leaf, and a turtle dove (kijibato). A turtle dove once built its nest in a tree on the grounds, and so it joined the emblem. A bird that nests in a library’s garden becomes, just like that, the library’s face for ever.

Kamisuna Library opened on its present site in 2000. It is on the second floor of a metropolitan housing block that also holds the Kamisuna Kaikan hall and a children’s centre, and it is the largest of the district libraries, with the most books on open shelves. Its emblem is the maneki-neko. Look closely and the cat’s right paw is beckoning “come in, come in” — the wish being that many people will visit. The biggest library in the district is still beckoning customers. A library with a real head for business.

Shibasaki Library moved in 2014 into a complex that includes Daiichi Elementary School, about a ten-minute walk from the South Exit of Tachikawa Station. It is a bright library with round reading tables. When its tanuki emblem was made, the library stood on the north side of Suwanomori Park. Many raccoon dogs lived here in the days of Tachikawa Village, so the tanuki was chosen as an animal with local roots. These days, the guide admits honestly, you rarely see a tanuki.

And finally, the Central Library. It opened on 12 January 1995 in Faret Tachikawa, the art-filled office and shopping district north of the station. It was the last of the Tachikawa libraries to be built, and its emblem is the kobushi magnolia, the city’s official flower. On top of the raccoon dog, the lucky cat, the cow and the rice fish, a single flower bloomed, and the nine libraries’ zoo — or rather botanical garden — was complete.