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」

Fussa Day Trip from Tachikawa: Yokota Air Base History, Route 16 Walk

上空から見た横田基地南北に延びる滑走路を福生などの市街地が囲んでいる 立川駅徒歩1分年中無休の溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ

One railway line and one boundary linking Tachikawa and Fussa

The ties between Fussa and Tachikawa are not only the base.

The Ome Line starts at Tachikawa Station. According to Fussa City, Fussa Station on the Ome Railway opened in 1894. According to the encyclopedia, the Ome Railway opened the line from Tachikawa to Ome on 19 November that same year, and Haijima, Fussa, Hamura, Ozaku and Ome stations opened on that day. In other words, Fussa Station has stood on the line running out of Tachikawa since the day it opened. Fussa City writes that in 1925 a bus between Fussa and Itsukaichi and the Itsukaichi Railway also began running, and Fussa became lively as the gateway to the Nishitama (western Tama) region. When the track reaching out from Tachikawa arrived, Fussa became the gateway to the west.

In the Showa era there was one more line than today. According to the encyclopedia, in 1930 the Itsukaichi Railway extended a line from Tachikawa to Haijima along a separate, roundabout route to the south of the Ome Line, and the two railways ran side by side between Tachikawa and Haijima. In 1944, at nationalisation, this Tachikawa–Haijima section was suspended as a non-essential line. The same year, the Ome Line between Tachikawa and Nakagami was double-tracked. In the middle of the war, one line disappeared and another grew fatter. After the war, in 1949, a morning through train from Ome to Tokyo began running. From Fussa, through Tachikawa, to Tokyo. On the route linking the base town and the city centre, Tachikawa was always there.

Then and now

  • Then (1943): at the temporary stop at Ushihama, only military personnel with season tickets could get a ticket. Now: on the day of the Japanese-American Friendship Festival, Ushihama Station overflows with crowds.
  • Then (1950s and 1960s): American military families lived in the white bungalows. In the mid-1970s, young people drawn by the low rents moved into the empty houses. In the business magazine article, someone who knew that era recalls that the Fussa of those days was full of an American culture that was still unfamiliar in Japan. Now: the surviving houses are cafés and photo studios, and the tourism association recommends them as places for souvenir photos.
  • Then (1969): transport planes took off from Tachikawa’s runway and moved to Fussa. Now: the lawns of a park spread over the Tachikawa site, and Fussa’s runway, still 3,350 metres, is part of a base used jointly by Japan and the US.

Older readers may remember looking up at English signs in front of Tachikawa Station. For younger readers that is a hard scene to imagine. The continuation of that scene still lies a dozen or so minutes up the Ome Line.

Let me sum up the base ties once more. Yokota Air Base was born in 1940 as an annex of the former Army Tachikawa Airfield. At the end of 1969, as flying stopped at Tachikawa Air Base, C-130 airlift units and others moved to Yokota. And even today, 0.29 square kilometres of Yokota’s land is in Tachikawa City. Tachikawa’s airfield gave birth to a child in Fussa, entrusted its own planes to that child late in life, and itself became a park. Read as a parent-and-child story, perhaps this is a little too sentimental. But line up the documents and it is hard to read it any other way.

The sentence in Fussa City’s chronology that held my eye longest was this one: “From around 1962, serious thought was given to shedding the image of a base town; that year the area was designated an urban development zone under the National Capital Region Development Act, and city planning went ahead.” A town that had grown with the base tried to become more than a base town. Then, on 1 July 1970, with a population of 38,749, the town of Fussa became Fussa City. Today the city counts up its facilities for daily life one by one: civic hall, library, gymnasium, parks, sewers.

Tachikawa did the same. After its base was returned, it put parks, a library and government offices on the land. Tachikawa after its base was gone, Fussa with its base still there, have each been trying to become “a town that is more than a base.” The difference between them is whether the fence is still standing; the direction they are heading in may be closer than you’d think.

When you finish walking Route 16 and turn around, there is a wide sky beyond the fence. On the map, the edge of that sky still connects to Tachikawa City.

The quiz answer

The answer is (B). According to the history of Ushihama Station collected in the encyclopedia, as military facilities went up one after another around Tama Airfield, the army ordered a temporary stop to be opened in haste, and it dealt only with military personnel holding season tickets. It opened on 1 March 1943. Today anyone can use it, and on the day of the annual Japanese-American Friendship Festival, crowds head from this station to the base’s Gate 5.

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

Before you go

  • From Tachikawa Station: take the JR Ome Line to Haijima (about 12 minutes by rapid train, according to Ishikawa Brewery). After Haijima comes Ushihama, then Fussa. According to the encyclopedia, the Route 16 shopping street and the base are about 600 metres east of Ushihama Station. Gate 2 of the base is on the east side of Fussa Station. Check train times on JR East’s information.
  • From Shinjuku: take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa and change to the Ome Line there.
  • Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO for the trains.
  • How to walk it: head east from Ushihama Station and, when you reach Route 16, walk north or south along the fence. According to the tourism association, the shopping street runs 1.6 kilometres north to south. Back on the west exit side of Fussa Station are the shopping streets where the Tanabata festival is held.
  • Inside the base: normally closed to the public. Always check the dates of open days such as the Japanese-American Friendship Festival, and the entry conditions (showing ID, bag checks and so on), in that year’s official announcements and Fussa City’s information. There are rules about photographing and entering the base; follow them.
  • Fussa City, “Yokota Air Base (Overview)”: https://www.city.fussa.tokyo.jp/municipal/yokotabase/outline/index.html
  • Fussa Tourism Association (event calendar, Yokota Air Base Story): https://www.fussakanko.jp/
  • American houses are private homes or businesses; look and take photos from the street, and don’t go onto the property.
  • To combine: walk from the east of Fussa westward towards the Tama River and you come to two sake breweries that have been running since the Edo period (see this series’ “Fussa sake breweries and the Tama River”). Back in Tachikawa, to trace the base’s history from Tachikawa’s side, the materials at the Tachikawa City Museum of History and Folklore and the Central Library are a good starting point (see “Tachikawa Air Base and Sunagawa” in this series).
立川駅徒歩1分年中無休の溶岩ホットヨガスタジオ

Back from the base town: Tachikawa Station North Exit

Because the fence runs along one side of Route 16, there are stretches where the scenery barely changes however far you walk. Before you know it, your legs are more tired than you expected. By the time the Ome Line brings you back to Tachikawa, your calves will be carrying the full 1.6 kilometres, there and back.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, on the 3rd 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 where classes are held on heated lava stone. There is also room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so even if you walk Fussa until evening, there is still time to stop in on the way home.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 (tax included), including rental of two bath towels, one face towel and a mat. You can drop in empty-handed. 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.

Studio information: https://ontheshore.jp/ ; trial booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

In front of Tachikawa Station, you remember where Fussa’s sky came from. The parent of that base was the town under your feet.

Cover photo: Yokota Air Base from the air, its north-south runway surrounded by Fussa and neighbouring towns. (Photo: ブルーノ・プラス / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

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