Hachioji Castle Ruins from Tachikawa: History Walk and Silk Town Guide

From castle-town market to city: Yokaichi and the fifteen post stations of Hachioji

After the castle fell, the Kanto became the domain of Tokugawa Ieyasu. According to Hachioji City, Ieyasu’s deputy Okubo Nagayasu newly established Hachioji-juku (the Hachioji Yokoyama Fifteen Post Stations) on the Koshu Dochu highway, and the original Hachioji area came to be called Moto-Hachioji, “Old Hachioji,” village. The city’s “Hachioji Monogatari” says Nagayasu moved the three post stations of the castle town Hojo Ujiteru had built below Hachioji Castle, Yokoyama, Yokaichi and Yawata, together with their people, to what is now the city centre, and organised them anew as Hachioji-juku.

Here the “Yokaichi” I asked you to remember comes back. The Yui no Yokaichi that appeared in Ujiyasu’s 1569 letter passed through the castle town of Hachioji Castle and moved all the way to the centre of the Tokugawa post town. The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Japan Heritage page also says that the market below Takiyama Castle where cloth was traded, said to be the origin of Hachioji textiles, was carried on below Hachioji Castle, and that the castle town and markets Ujiteru built were then moved to Hachioji-juku, organised by the Edo shogunate. The castle perished, but the market did not. A place where people gather to buy and sell is tougher than any lord.

The market was held on fixed days. According to Hachioji City’s “History of Hachioji Textiles,” in the Edo period the fifteen post stations of Hachioji were established and markets were held on every day of the month ending in 4 or 8, with cocoons, raw silk and cloth gathering from the surrounding villages. In this region, much of the cloth was woven in stripes from thread spun from silk floss and dyed, so local textiles were called shima-mono, “striped goods,” and the cloth market was called the shima-ichi, “striped market.” Kefukigusa, a book compiled in the early 17th century, lists “Takiyama Yokoyama tsumugi stripes” among the specialities of Musashi province. Takiyama and Yokoyama. The place names of the castle towns had become the names of cloth and appeared in an Edo-period book.

To the west of Hachioji-juku were stationed the Hachioji Sennin Doshin, the “Thousand Men” corps. According to Hachioji City, this corps, made up largely of former retainers of the Takeda clan, guarded the border with Kai province and helped restore order in the area after the fall of Hachioji Castle, and later served as fire wardens around Nikko Toshogu Shrine until the end of the shogunate. It also produced many cultured men who excelled in geography and Dutch learning (Western studies), the city writes. Edo-period Hachioji was a town of commerce with its markets, and a town of learning for its samurai.

The post town grew into the largest post town on the Koshu Dochu highway, the Agency for Cultural Affairs page says. And this town would eventually acquire a beautiful name.

Soto, the only “Mulberry Capital” in Japan: Saigyo’s poem and the Silk Road

“Hachioji Monogatari” traces why Hachioji came to be called Soto (桑都), “the mulberry capital,” to a single poem said to be by the poet-monk Saigyo: “Cross the Asakawa river / and Fuji’s snow is white; / over the mulberry capital / blows the green wind of summer.” The poem is recorded in an essay from the late Edo period, and against the background of the bustling cloth markets of Hachioji-juku, which flourished around that time, the name “Soto” came into common use, the city writes. And it goes on: “Hachioji is the only place in Japan called Soto.”

There were countless places in Japan where silkworm-raising flourished. The Agency for Cultural Affairs’ Japan Heritage page, too, says that while the silk industry was carried on all over Japan, the only place called Soto was Hachioji. Only one town in Japan can call itself the capital of mulberries.

That silk crossed the sea. With the opening of the port of Yokohama in 1859, raw silk for export collected in Hachioji was carried to Yokohama along the Hama Kaido road. This road later came to be called the “Silk Road,” Hachioji City writes. Westerners living in Yokohama travelled it too, and the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann and the photographer Felice Beato recorded Hachioji-juku and its silkworm-raising in travel writing and photographs. The same Schliemann who dug up Troy came to look at Hachioji’s silkworms. A few stations west of Tachikawa, you can follow the footsteps of a world-famous archaeologist.

In the Meiji era, Hachioji also had a bitter experience. According to Hachioji City, in the decade from 1877 the careless use of poor-quality imported chemical dyes lowered the quality of its cloth, and the market shut it out with the notice “We will not handle any Hachioji textiles.” Stung into action, brokers and weavers formed the Hachioji Textile Association in 1886, opened a dyeing school the following year, and invited Japan’s leading dyeing expert of the time to teach. The plot from exclusion to recovery is the story of a production centre’s real strength.

Supported by the rise of its textile industry, Hachioji became a city in 1917, the second in Tokyo Prefecture, the city writes: second after the city of Tokyo itself. Tachikawa became a city in 1940, and according to Tachikawa City, it was the third in Tokyo Prefecture after Tokyo and Hachioji. The first city in the Tama area was Hachioji; the second, Tachikawa. Even in the order of becoming cities, Tachikawa has walked just behind Hachioji.

Mulberry capital and mulberry-seedling village: the thread linking Hachioji and Tachikawa

What were Tachikawa’s villages doing, just east of the mulberry capital? Reading the Tachikawa museum’s guide “Sunagawa’s Mulberry Seedlings,” I felt like puffing out my chest a little. The Tama area was once a major producer of mulberry seedlings. Above all, Sunagawa village was especially famous as a centre of mulberry seedlings, and in the Taisho era (1912–1926) its production was at one point the largest in the country, the city writes.

Mulberry leaves are the silkworm’s food. According to the city’s guide, large, thick mulberry leaves were considered best for raising silkworms; the silkworms ate good leaves eagerly, and you harvested more cocoons. Sunagawa was already known for mulberries in the Kyoho era (1716–1736), and when production by grafting was established from the end of the shogunate into the Meiji era, mass production became possible and new varieties were developed almost every year. If Hachioji was the mulberry “capital,” Sunagawa was perhaps the nursery village that grew the trees lining the capital’s streets. I could not find any records showing what share of the cocoons that gathered at Hachioji’s markets came from silkworms fed on mulberries grown from Sunagawa seedlings. But it is certain that within the same silk economy, the two places each held their own post.

Tachikawa’s farmers wove, too. According to the city’s guide “Silkworm-Raising and Weaving,” silkworm-raising in Tachikawa flourished from the middle of the Edo period and remained the centre of farming until around the beginning of the Showa era. In the Sunagawa district, “Sunagawa futori” cloth was woven from the late Edo period, and in the Meiji era, under the influence of Murayama gasuri, an ikat cloth from the neighbouring Murayama area, production shifted mainly to Murayama gasuri. A survey carried out in Sunagawa village in 1889 found that weaving was done in 500 households, 85 per cent of the farming households in the village. The sound of looms would have come from eight or nine houses out of every ten.

That same year, 1889, according to Tachikawa City’s chronology, the Kobu Railway opened between Shinjuku and Tachikawa in April, and in August the line was extended from Tachikawa to Hachioji. It was also the year the mulberry-seedling village and the mulberry capital were joined by a single railway line.

Showa-era mulberry fields, and the clatter of “gacha-man”

Let me tell you about the Showa era (1926–1989). Older readers may have scenes of their own to remember.

In Hachioji, the war burned the weaving town to the ground once. According to Hachioji City, the air raid of 2 August 1945 reduced 90 per cent of the urban area to ashes, and the factories left at the end of the war numbered only about 20 per cent of those in 1941. Even so, the town recovered. Post-war clothing shortages drove up demand for cloth, and by around 1950 Hachioji was enjoying a boom so great that people called it “gacha-man”: every time the loom went gacha, you made ten thousand (man) yen. Patterned wool, born around 1955, kept selling into the 1960s and became the biggest hit of post-war Hachioji textiles, the city writes.

At the same time, in Sunagawa to the north of Tachikawa, mulberry seedlings were still growing. The city’s guide carries a photograph of mulberry seedlings being shipped by truck in Kamisunacho in 1961, and another of mulberry fields spreading across Sunagawa in 1979. Even as the Showa era drew towards its close, Tachikawa still had mulberry fields.

Then: the clatter of looms echoed through Hachioji, mulberry leaves swayed in the fields of Sunagawa, and the Chuo Line ran between them. Now: Hachioji is known as one of Japan’s leading producers of neckties, and its traditional skills live on as “Tama-ori,” designated a national Traditional Craft in 1980, Hachioji City writes. In Tachikawa, after silkworm-raising declined, the cultivation of Tokyo udo began in the decade after 1945. The sound of looms and the mulberry fields have almost vanished from sight. Even so, if the necktie on someone passing through Tachikawa Station was woven in Hachioji, a single thread still runs to it from the mulberry capital.

More than 430 years have passed since Hachioji Castle fell. The castle of the lord Tachikawa’s samurai served has returned to forest on its mountain, and the market below it became a town, the only mulberry capital in Japan. The village that grew mulberry seedlings is now a city whose station has the most JR passengers in the Tama area. After looking up at the stone walls of the mountain castle, you take a train home to Tachikawa without changing. The journey itself becomes a walk that follows a single thread.

The quiz answer

The answer is (A), Venetian lace glass vessels. According to Hachioji City, the Venetian lace glass excavated at the Goshuden site has been found nowhere else in Japan, which makes it extremely valuable. The Japan Heritage application documents say the excavated finds are displayed at the Hachioji City Museum of Local History.

Before you go

• From Tachikawa Station: take a westbound JR Chuo Line train to Takao Station with no change of trains (after Hino, Toyoda, Hachioji and Nishi-Hachioji). From bus stop 1 at Takao Station’s North Exit, take a Nishi Tokyo Bus bound for “Takao no Mori Wakuwaku Village,” “Hoshoji Danchi,” “Ongata Terminal,” “Okubo,” “Jinba Kogen-shita,” “Green Town Takao” or “Miyamacho,” get off at “Reien-mae / Hachioji-joato Iriguchi,” and walk about 20 minutes. On Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays only, a bus bound for “Hachioji-joato” runs from the same stop (according to Hachioji City). Check journey times in the train and bus timetables.
• From Shinjuku: the JR Chuo Line runs west from Shinjuku through Tachikawa. Check whether your train continues to Takao or whether you need to change at Tachikawa.
• Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on both the trains and the buses.
• Guidance Facility: 3-2664-2 Motohachiojimachi, Hachioji, Tokyo. Open 9:00 to 17:00; closed over the New Year holiday (29 December to 3 January). The “100 Fine Castles of Japan” stamp is inside the Guidance Facility, not at the management building (according to Hachioji City).
• The car park and management building are open 9:00 to 17:00. Visits at night or late at night are firmly refused, as they disturb people living nearby.
• Beware of bears: according to Hachioji City, an Asian black bear was sighted near the Goshuden Falls on 30 May 2026. Check the city’s latest warnings before you go.
• On the trail: the path from the management building to the inner keep is maintained, but the city asks visitors not to enter areas that are not. Hachioji Shrine is about 25 minutes on foot from the trailhead; it is a mountain path, so wear comfortable shoes (according to Hachioji City). The city says its official guide service is temporarily suspended. This is a site of battle and death as well as a shrine; walk it respectfully.
• Official pages: Hachioji City, “Hachioji Castle Ruins” https://www.city.hachioji.tokyo.jp/kurashi/kyoiku/005/bunkazaikanrenshisetsu/p005201.html ; “Hachioji Castle Ruins Guidance Facility” https://www.city.hachioji.tokyo.jp/kankobunka/003/005/p005205.html ; Japan Heritage “Reiki Manzan: Mount Takao” https://japan-heritage.bunka.go.jp/ja/stories/story088/
• To combine: from the same Takao Station you can also visit Mount Takao, whose forest Hojo Ujiteru so fiercely protected (see this series’ “Mount Takao” article). You can walk the castle mountain and the mountain of prayer in a single day.

On the way home: Tachikawa Station North Exit

By the time you have climbed up and down the mountain castle’s slopes and come back to Tachikawa, your legs will carry a pleasant heaviness. In autumn or winter, you may have brought home a little of the chill from the shade of Shiroyama’s trees as well.

A one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR 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 the castle ruins in the morning and the streets of Hachioji in the afternoon, there is time to stop in once you are back in Tachikawa.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 (tax included), including rental of two bath towels, one face towel and a mat, so you can drop in on the way back from your walk with nothing but yourself. 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

From the castle the samurai of Tachikawa served, back to the front of Tachikawa Station. A distance of more than four hundred years, there and back in a single day.

Cover photo: The Hikibashi bridge at Hachioji Castle ruins, a wooden bridge over the Shiroyama River leading to stone walls. (Photo: Mocchy / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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