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 Live Music Guide: Basement Venues and Where TM Meant Tama

TM stood for Tama: two boys from Tachikawa, and “The Sky over Tachikawa”

Let me go back to the trio from the opening.

According to the encyclopedia, Naoto Kine of TM NETWORK comes from Tachikawa in Tokyo. Takashi Utsunomiya was born in Kumamoto Prefecture and grew up in Tachikawa. The two were classmates from elementary school through high school, and their friendship, it says, has lasted more than 50 years. Both graduated from Nihon University Meisei High School in Uenohara, Yamanashi Prefecture: a school out west along the Chuo Line, just across the prefectural border as seen from Tachikawa.

In 1983 the two formed a group with Tetsuya Komuro. According to the same encyclopedia entry, since all three lived in Santama (the “three Tama districts,” the old name for the Tama area of western Tokyo), Komuro wanted “Tama” in the name. From something Kine came up with on a whim (the source names the band Men at Work), the word “network” sprang to mind, and they settled on TAMA NETWORK. But Utsunomiya objected: “Isn’t ‘Tama’ a bit uncool?” At Komuro’s suggestion, they compromised by shortening TAMA to TM.

Another account cites Komuro’s own testimony that a person at the record company turned the name down. Either way, the place name Tama was hidden inside a two-letter abbreviation. Officially, TM was explained as short for “Time Machine.”

The funny part comes later. According to the encyclopedia, the three have since said many times on television and radio that the name came from Tama. One of those occasions was a 2023 radio programme called “Tachihi Group presents Tokyo 042: Tama Moriage Sengen” (“Declaration to Liven Up Tama”; 042 is the telephone area code for much of Tama). A show sponsored by a Tachikawa company, declaring its mission to liven up Tama, on which the band explained the origin of its name. The hidden name, after several decades, gets its answer key read out on a local programme. A nice story.

Naoto Kine is still connected to Tachikawa. According to the encyclopedia, since April 2024 he has hosted a programme called “Kine Naoto no: Tachikawa no Sora kara” (“Naoto Kine: From the Sky over Tachikawa”) on FM Tachikawa, the city’s community radio station. A list of Japanese “local songs” by prefecture (songs tied to a particular place) gives Kine’s “Tachikawa no Sora” (“The Sky over Tachikawa”) as the song for Tachikawa. The man who sent “Get Wild,” the group’s big 1987 hit, out across the country is now talking about the sky over Tachikawa on his hometown station.

Those two letters, TM, seem to me to capture the way this town does music rather well. Tama on the inside, but never written as Tama on the outside. Those who know, know.

So was there never a night when the name Tachikawa was firmly tied to music? There was. And it was a summer on a scale of 60,000 people.

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A summer of 62,200: THE ALFEE at Showa Kinen Park

On 16 August 1998, at the national government’s Showa Kinen Park (Showa Memorial Park) in Tachikawa, the rock band THE ALFEE held its summer outdoor concert, “TOKYO ONE NIGHT DREAM.” The date and place survive both on a website that collects live-concert records and in a satellite TV channel’s programme listing. According to an encyclopedia’s summary, 62,200 people attended.

TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, the arena completed in 2020 north of Tachikawa Station.
TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN, the arena completed in 2020 north of Tachikawa Station.
Photo: Kakidai / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

The day before, on 15 August, there was an eve-of-show event that included the final of a contest for ALFEE cover bands. On the night before the real thing, bands imitating the real thing competed for honours. Tachikawa’s lawns heard ALFEE songs two nights running.

There was a little back story to that year’s show. According to the encyclopedia, at the previous summer’s outdoor concert, strong winds from a typhoon had made fireworks and other effects unusable; the silver streamers fired on the first day were blown onto power lines, and the surrounding area lost power. A band member apologised from the stage on the second day. Having learned the lesson, the band came to Tachikawa fully prepared for wind. But that year there was almost no wind at all, and the show was played in scorching heat.

In the year they braced for wind, the wind never came. The sun came instead. Weather never seems to answer faithfully to only the last mistake you made.

Showa Kinen Park is a national park that opened in 1983 on part of the site of the former US Tachikawa Air Base. On land where American transport planes once took off and landed, 60,000 people gathered to hear rock. How did that sight look to those who remembered the days of the runway? I can only imagine. (For more on the park, see this series’ guide to Showa Kinen Park.)

Today, if you want to hear music with a few thousand other people in Tachikawa, there is TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN in GREEN SPRINGS, north of the station. Built in 2020, it is the first privately run arena in the Tama area and holds up to about 3,000 people. The encyclopedia describes a design that combines the acoustics of a live house with the flexibility of a hall. From 30 tsubo underground to 60,000 people in the open air: the range of sizes of Tachikawa’s musical vessels is remarkably wide.

I have been talking about big stages, but the most interesting music in Tachikawa may be the sound that plays where there is no stage at all. Once a year there is a weekend when the town itself becomes the stage.

Two days when the whole town is a stage: the Tachikawa Ittai Music Festival and jazz from Yokota

Every May, the Tachikawa Ittai Music Festival (立川いったい音楽まつり, Tachikawa Ittai Ongaku Matsuri) is held around the station. Ittai means “all around the area.” According to the volunteer recruitment guidelines for the 13th festival in 2024, there were 12 venues around the city and about 220 performing groups. Any genre of music is welcome, along with dance and traditional Japanese dance. Since the 13th was held in 2024, the first must have been in 2012. In 2026 the 15th festival was held on 23 and 24 May. The festival’s office is inside Tamashin RISURU Hall, that is, the Tachikawa Civic Hall, in Nishikicho. Volunteers work from 8:30 in the morning to 6:30 in the evening on both days, and boxed lunches are provided, the guidelines say. Stages all over town, put up by the townspeople and taken down by the townspeople. Behind the scenes, a music festival is also a festival that takes a lot of stamina. I wrote about the origin of the name, and the jazz concert recorded in the city’s chronology, in the article on Tachikawa’s festivals and fireworks.

What I want to note here is another concert, held before the festival.

The festival’s official website contains a line saying that every year, before the festival, it holds “Pacific Showcase.” In one year’s message of thanks, it adds that, perhaps because of the global hit of city pop (the polished Japanese pop of the late 1970s and 1980s), the performers took up more Japanese songs than usual.

Search for the name Pacific Showcase on the US Air Force bands’ website, and it appears as the name of the jazz ensemble of the US Air Force Band of the Pacific-Asia, based at Yokota Air Base. According to its introduction, its music spans a hundred years of cultural heritage, from early New Orleans jazz to modern compositions.

A jazz band from Yokota playing Japanese songs ahead of Tachikawa’s town music festival. City pop, no less.

Here I found myself lost in thought for a while. After the war, at the clubs on the Tachikawa base, Japanese bands played American songs for American soldiers. Now, in the town of Tachikawa, a US Air Force band plays Japanese songs for Japanese people. In about seventy years, the stage has turned exactly the other way round.

How flying at the Tachikawa base stopped and the airlift units moved to Yokota, I wrote in the article on Fussa and Yokota Air Base. But the musical connection carries on like this, even with the fence gone. For Americans living at Yokota, Tachikawa is presumably one of the big neighbouring towns to head into at the weekend. And the curtain-raiser for that town’s festival is played by a band from their own country. Not a bad story, I think.

On festival days, people who normally walk past as shoppers stand in station-front plazas and outside shops with instruments in their arms. In the words of the guidelines, the music is all genres, with dance and traditional dance added. Here, the line between audience and performer blurs. Remember the “about 220 groups” from the numbers box. At some venues, there must be times when more people are playing than listening. Is that lonely, or rich? I think it is the latter.

The music town that never says its name: why doesn’t Tachikawa call itself a “music town”?

Let me return to the question I started with. Why doesn’t Tachikawa call itself a music town?

Looking back along the road I have walked, something like an answer comes into view. Tachikawa’s music has always played as somebody else’s stage. In the base era, it was a stage for American soldiers. The Air Self-Defense Force band spent 65 years in Tachikawa as the music of Japan’s air arm. TM NETWORK went out to the whole country with the name of Tama squeezed into two letters. The 62,200 at Showa Kinen Park came to hear THE ALFEE, not to hear Tachikawa.

Tachikawa is a town that has lent out its stages without ever claiming the lead role.

Perhaps that was the temperament of a base town. In the middle of its own land, there was someone else’s airfield. Its own nights were lit by establishments for other people. A town that came through that era learned to offer a stage to whoever arrived, before it ever learned to hold up its own name.

But I want to stop having answered only half the question. The other half is probably underground.

The fan-shaped cabaret stage now belongs to local bands and disco-loving seventy-somethings. The three basements by the South Exit have each spent close to twenty years lending their stages to young unknown musicians. The big vessels above ground change with the times. But the small stages underground are still here, without changing their signs.

Back then, Tachikawa’s music played inside the fence of a base, for other people. Now, Tachikawa’s music plays in the basements by the station, for the people of Tachikawa. It doesn’t need to announce itself. The sound is right here.

Quiz answer

The answer is 3: about 65 years. The band moved from Hamamatsu to the Tachikawa Sub-Base in July 1958, and moved to its new building at Fuchu Air Base in the spring of 2023. The Tokyo Olympics performances and the recordings that pioneered wind-band pops were both work from its Tachikawa years.

Before you go

  • The live houses: A.A.COMPANY (B1F, Coral Tachikawa Building, 3-10-4 Shibasakicho, Tachikawa; 5 minutes’ walk from the South Exit of JR Tachikawa Station), Heart Beat (B1F, 2-1-35 Nishikicho, Tachikawa; 3 minutes from the South Exit) and BABEL The Rock Tower (about 3 minutes from the South Exit). All three are within walking distance of the South Exit. Schedules, prices and door times differ from venue to venue, so check each official website (mostly in Japanese).
    • A.A.COMPANY: https://www.livehouse-tachikawa-aacompany.com/
    • Heart Beat: https://live-heartbeat.net/
    • BABEL The Rock Tower: https://babel-rocktower.net/
  • The big stage: TACHIKAWA STAGE GARDEN is 8 minutes’ walk from JR Tachikawa Station and 7 minutes from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Toshi Monorail (according to Tachihi Holdings). For performance schedules, see the organisers’ announcements.
  • The music festival: The Tachikawa Ittai Music Festival is usually held in May. Check venues and line-ups on the official site (Japanese): https://tachikawa-ittai.jimdofree.com/
  • Getting there: From Shinjuku, Tachikawa is in the thirty-minute range on the JR Chuo Line Rapid service. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line runs from Kawasaki with no change of trains in about an hour. Tachikawa is close enough to soak up the sound in a basement and still get home without fretting over the last train.
  • Practical tips: Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on JR and the monorail. Japanese live houses often add a drink charge at the door, so keep some cash handy and check each venue’s site. Earplugs are worth having for a small basement room.
  • Combine it with: Walk Showa Kinen Park by day, then come back to the South Exit in the evening and open a basement door. To trace the nights of the base era, read this alongside the series’ articles on the history of Tachikawa’s nightlife districts north and south of the station and the culture of the base town; the meaning of that fan-shaped stage becomes a little more three-dimensional.

After the underground music, the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

Climb up out of a live-house basement and the bass is still humming somewhere deep in your ears. After two hours of standing to listen, your body is stiffer than you think.

One minute’s 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), a hot yoga studio heated by lava-stone plates. It also 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. You can loosen up before an evening show, or drop in on the morning of the music festival weekend before heading out into town.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental. Even with a guitar case over your shoulder, you can drop in with nothing else.

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, often helps guests from the US bases in English herself. She holds Eiken Grade 1, Japan’s top English qualification, and a perfect TOEIC score, once worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and lived in Alaska for three years; visitors from abroad have praised the English support in Google reviews. Not every lesson is in English, so if you would like an English-friendly lesson, just mention it when you book.

  • On the Shore: https://ontheshore.jp/
  • Trial lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

The sound that rang out on a stage underground, slowly turned back into breath on a third floor above ground. In this town, you can make noise and find quiet, both right by the station.

Cover photo: The South Exit of Tachikawa Station; three basement live houses lie within a few minutes’ walk. (Photo: Hector Martin / CC BY-SA 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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