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 Fireworks Festival Guide: History, Tips and Things to Do

Autumn is the Yoito Matsuri, winter is an avenue of light

Before we get there, I want to note that Tachikawa’s festivals are not only fireworks.

Sun Sun Road in Tachikawa, a tree-lined avenue with the Tama Monorail viaduct running above
Sun Sun Road in Tachikawa, a tree-lined avenue with the Tama Monorail viaduct running above
Photo: 深鸣 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

In autumn there is the Tachikawa Yoito Matsuri. It is organized by the Tachikawa Yoito Matsuri committee and co-hosted by the City of Tachikawa and the city’s regional culture foundation. The first was held in 1989 (Heisei 1), and 12 October 2025 was the 37th. In the city chronology’s entry for 1989, a few lines after “Events held to mark the 100th anniversary of Tachikawa Station’s opening,” comes “1st Tachikawa Yoito Matsuri held.” The year the station turned a hundred, the town gained a new festival. For 2023 the chronology notes, alongside the fireworks’ “first time in four years,” that the mando mikoshi — portable shrines hung with lanterns — paraded “for the first time in four years.” The venue is Sun Sun Road, right next to Tachikawa-Kita Station, running beneath the Tama Monorail. The 2025 programme ran for ten hours, from 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Parades of festival floats (dashi) and lantern shrines, festival music (ohayashi), and minyo nagashi — a procession of people dancing to folk songs — have been the backbone of the festival since the first one. To these are added taiko drumming, taimatsu mawashi (torch twirling), YOSAKOI dance, a music parade, a song show, food stalls and a display of children’s lanterns. Floats parade beneath the monorail’s girders. The props of an Edo-style festival and a vehicle that runs through the sky fit into a single frame. Above the flutes of the festival band, the monorail slides past without a sound.

In winter, the same Sun Sun Road becomes an avenue of light. “Tachikawa Illumination” was launched in 2024 by a general incorporated association, Tachikita Area Management, taking over from “Tachikawa Sansan Illumination,” which had long brightened Tachikawa’s winters. According to the announcement, the 48 zelkova trees along this cycling and walking street — about 40 metres wide and about 550 metres long — are lit with about 10,000 bulbs each, about 600,000 in all. In the winter of 2025 they glowed from 1 November to 18 January of the following year, from 5 p.m. to midnight. At the entrance stood a gate of light reading “TACHIKAWA ILLUMINATION,” the street’s symbolic “BIG TREE” shone, and in December a market called “TACHIKAWA WINTER MARKET” was held. People who looked up at the sky from the lawn in summer look up at branches under the trees in winter. Tachikawa’s festivals, whatever else they do, make you look up.

From spring into early summer there is the Tachikawa Ittai Ongaku Matsuri, a music festival run by a committee of residents and supported by the regional culture foundation. The foundation was set up in 1988, the year before the Yoito Matsuri began. The 13th edition, in 2024, was planned with about 220 groups playing music or dancing at 12 venues around the city. The ittai in the name means holding live shows “all around” (ittai, 一帯) the city, as the volunteer recruitment guide explains. The city chronology for 2016 records that the jazz pianist Yosuke Yamashita played a concert on the eve of this music festival. A jazz gig, in a city’s official chronology. I doubt many cities have a chronology like that.

And at the end of August there is the annual grand festival of Suwa Shrine in Shibasakicho, with its old lion dance and sumo — a story told in another piece in this series. Showa Kinen Park, the fireworks venue, also holds events with “festival” in their names season by season: the Flower Festival in spring, the Cosmos Festival in autumn, and the Yellow and Red Leaves Festival in November.

A 2017 document from the Kanto Regional Development Bureau, which manages the park, shows several photos of events held with local governments and groups. “Tachikawa Rakuichi,” a participatory festival run by residents and hosted by the city. The 2016 “Tokyo 2020 Live Site in 2016 — From Rio to Tokyo.” And the qualifying race for the Hakone Ekiden. The famous university relay race that Japan watches on television every New Year has one of its battles for a starting place here, in this park. Around the lawn where 745,000 people looked up on fireworks night, university runners race past in autumn. Tachikawa’s lawn is a great stage that changes its leading actors with the seasons.

Summer fireworks that began as an evening-cool show by the river, floats beneath the monorail, light in the zelkovas, music all over town, the lion dance of an old village shrine. Tachikawa’s year turns over far more noisily than I had expected.

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The fireworks go up from an airfield

Let us go back to that bracket. “Launch site not disclosed.”

Golden fireworks over Tachikawa on 25 July 2026, seen from a street near the venue
Golden fireworks over Tachikawa on 25 July 2026, seen from a street near the venue
Photo: DiKnK8713 / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

The answer was written in that 2011 cancellation notice. Before giving its reasons for cancelling, the committee explained how the festival had been run until then. The Tachikawa fireworks, it said, had been held with the launch site provided by the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force’s Camp Tachikawa, with Showa Kinen Park lent as the viewing area, with the support of the police and fire services, and with generous sponsorship from local companies and businesses.

The launch site was inside the base. In the committee’s current documents too, JGSDF Camp Tachikawa is listed under “special cooperation.” The official website of Showa Kinen Park explains that, because of aviation height restrictions from the Self-Defense Force runway next to the park, the ginkgo avenue inside the park is trimmed to a height of 7 metres. According to the city chronology, the current runway belongs to the “New Tachikawa Airfield,” which entered service in 1982 — the very year the fireworks are said to have come back. And every summer, the fireworks go up from the runway side.

The documents also hint at why the location is kept quiet. The committee writes that it fears visitor numbers will exceed what the viewing areas can hold and that it will no longer be able to keep people safe, and that, following police guidance, it is steering spectators to the main venue. If crowds surge toward the launch site, people get hurt. Far from sinister, the secret launch pad was a bracket written for safety, first and last.

Hear the name Tachikawa and some people picture a plain interchange station. I half thought so myself. But this town has a fireworks festival with 1.5-shaku shells, rare even within Tokyo; in one night, four times its population comes to look up at the sky. And those fireworks go up from airfield land that has been tied to the sky since the Taisho era (1912–1926).

Airplanes once took off from this flat ground. Now, once a year, fireworks take off from it. The airfield town is still using its sky.

It is a single ride on the Chuo Line from Shinjuku, a single ride on the Nambu Line from Kawasaki. On a Saturday at the end of July, close enough to board the train in a yukata, there is a night sky full of 1.5-shaku shells that you rarely get to see anywhere else in Tokyo.

Quiz answer

The answer is B: “Adults get lost too.” In the official flyer’s one-point advice, after the note that phones are hard to use before and after the launch so you should fix a meeting place, it is added in brackets. Among 745,000 people, adults and children are equally good candidates for getting lost.

Before you go

  • The festival: The Tachikawa Festival Showa Kinen Park Fireworks (立川まつり国営昭和記念公園花火大会) has been held on the night of a Saturday at the end of July. In 2026 it was on 25 July, from 7:15 to 8:15 p.m.; held in light rain, cancelled in stormy weather, with no postponement date. The date, the paid zone and how tickets are sold, and the free viewing areas change from year to year, so always check the latest on the official website.
  • From central Tokyo and Kanagawa: Tachikawa Station is a single ride from Shinjuku on the JR Chuo Line. A walking-route leaflet from the Tokyo Metropolitan Government’s Bureau of Environment gives Shinjuku to Tachikawa as 30 minutes on the Chuo Line. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki and Tachikawa stations with no change of trains.
  • Getting there: The committee’s documents give the walk from JR Tachikawa Station as 15 minutes. According to the Showa Kinen Park website, the Akebono Gate is about 10 minutes from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, and about 8 minutes from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail. There is no parking on the day and visitors are asked not to come by car. Nishi-Tachikawa Station gets extremely crowded, and the committee even asks the media not to publicize directions via Nishi-Tachikawa.
  • On the day: Phones are hard to connect before and after the launch, so agree on a meeting place first. The official side asks you to prepare for heatstroke and sudden rain and to take your rubbish home. The venue map on the official flyer shows the lost-child center and first-aid stations. Whether the festival goes ahead has been announced on the morning of the day on the official website and official X (Twitter) account. The 2026 flyer also listed an automated phone line with festival information, available on the day only. There are traffic restrictions around the venue, and a map is posted on the official website every year.
  • Paid zone: In 2026, Minna no Harappa and its surroundings were a paid zone, and you needed a paper ticket bought and printed in advance. Sponsor viewing tickets included chair seats, picnic-sheet seats and group tickets. The Tachikawa Gate and Sunagawa Gate car parks became free viewing areas. Arrangements change every year, so be sure to read that year’s official guidance.
  • Park admission: The committee’s documents say admission to Showa Kinen Park is free all day on fireworks day (the paid viewing zone is separate).
  • Time needed: The show is 60 minutes, but with the crowds getting in and out, plan on half a day from afternoon to night.
  • Combine with: By day, the park itself, whose history is told in this series’ Showa Kinen Park piece. Sun Sun Road, venue of the autumn Yoito Matsuri and the winter illumination, is the street walked in the series’ GREEN SPRINGS piece, and GREEN SPRINGS lies at its end. For Hino Bridge and the Tama riverside, see the series’ piece on the Nekawa stream and the Tama River.
  • General tips: Carry an IC transit card such as Suica or PASMO, so you don’t need to buy paper tickets. Check dates and opening days on the official sites before you travel; most official pages are in Japanese, and a browser’s translate function helps.
  • Fireworks festival official site: https://hanabi.tokyo-tachikawa.org/
  • Showa Kinen Park access: https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/access/
  • Tachikawa Illumination: https://tachikawaillumination.com/
  • City of Tachikawa tourism and events: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/m-kanko/1003027.html

After the festival, by Tachikawa Station’s North Exit

Fireworks night means walking and standing, and then more walking and standing. You wait on the lawn from the afternoon, then drift back to the station with the crowd. A festival leaves more tiredness in the body than you expect. If you want to loosen up afterwards, On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店) is a one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo.

Ryo Miyagawa, who runs the studio, goes to the Showa Kinen Park fireworks every year with his wife. Among the 745,000 people looking up at the summer sky are people who opened a business in this town and have been supported by it.

The studio’s speciality is hot yoga in a room laid with 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 lessons. It is open every day, 8:00 to 23:30.

For first-timers there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 (tax included), with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat to rent included. Pregnant guests cannot join the 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

On a night at the end of July, the first shell climbs out of the darkness beyond the lawn. Beneath its light, there is still a runway.

Cover photo: Tachikawa fireworks night: many colourful shells bursting and overlapping in the dark sky (Photo: ajari / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

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