Kokubunji Walk from Tachikawa: Otaka-no-Michi Springs and History

Tosando Musashi-michi: an ancient straight road 12 metres wide

Between Musashi Kokubunji’s monks’ temple and nuns’ temple, a road ran straight from north to south. This was the Tosando Musashi-michi.

According to Kokubunji City’s tourism site, the Tosando Musashi-michi was an ancient official highway linking Kozuke Province and the Musashi provincial capital. From what is now Gunma Prefecture down to Fuchu, orders from the capital, taxes and people travelled along this road.

It was found in 1995 (Heisei 7). According to the historical park guidebook, during an excavation for the redevelopment of the site of the former Japanese National Railways’ Central Railway Training School, south-east of Nishi-Kokubunji Station, archaeologists uncovered a straight road about 12 metres wide and about 340 metres long from north to south, with gutters along both its east and west sides. At the time it was rare anywhere in Japan for an ancient official road to be found on such a scale, and the development plan was changed so that the road could be preserved underground.

Twelve metres wide. At first I thought I had misread the figure. It is far wider than the roads through today’s residential streets. On the Musashino of 1,300 years ago, a straight avenue ran on for kilometres.

Today, at the site of the Tosando Musashi-michi laid out opposite the city hall, the lines of the gutters that were found are marked by the colour of the paving. The road site was added to the National Historic Site in 2010 (Heisei 22), and the site’s name became “Musashi Kokubunji Ruins, with the Tosando Musashi-michi Ruins.”

Stand on the road and look north. At the end of that straight line, long ago, lay Kozuke Province. Look south, and there is the provincial capital at Fuchu. The orders of the state were carried down from the top of the cliff to the bottom along this 12-metre road.

But why had the land where this road lay sleeping been left untouched until the end of the Showa era? Because a railway school stood on it.

Showa-era Kokubunji: a railway school and a rocket that flew sideways

According to an encyclopedia, the Central Railway Training School was an educational institution of Japanese National Railways (JNR), the state railway, south of Nishi-Kokubunji Station. Its predecessor, the Central Railway Training Institute, moved its headquarters to Kokubunji in 1953 (Showa 28) and was renamed the Central Railway Training School in 1961 (Showa 36). Shinji Sogo, the JNR president at the time, is said to have negotiated with the Ministry of Education to make it a “JNR University” so that JNR staff who had finished high school could earn a university degree. University status was never granted, but the students were employed as JNR staff, and inside the school, it is said, they wore JNR uniforms.

In those days, on the south side of the Chuo Line between Kokubunji and Kunitachi, there were wide grounds where young railway workers in uniform studied. Today part of that land has become the Tokyo Metropolitan Musashi Kokubunji Park, and also a watershed forest protecting the springs. And beneath it sleeps a Nara-period avenue. The Showa railwaymen studied railways without knowing that an ancient trunk road lay under their feet. Under the people learning about roads, there was a road.

The school closed with the breakup and privatisation of JNR in 1987 (Showa 62). The redevelopment of its site led to the discovery of the Tosando Musashi-michi.

Nishi-Kokubunji Station itself dates from the later Showa era. It opened on 1 April 1973 (Showa 48), at the same time as the Musashino Line. According to an encyclopedia, until then the Shimogawara Line had run from Kokubunji Station towards Fuchu; it began in 1910 (Meiji 43) as the Tokyo Gravel Railway, built to carry gravel from the Tama River. Because its route overlapped with the Musashino Line, it ended passenger service the day before. The gravel line disappeared, and a new orbital line and a new station were born. The spring of 1973 was the spring Kokubunji’s railway map was redrawn.

Showa-era Kokubunji has one more unexpected “Japan’s first.” Kokubunji City’s tourism site writes that in 1955 (Showa 30), Japan’s first rocket launch experiment was held in Kokubunji, and space development began. According to an encyclopedia, this was the Pencil Rocket, with Hideo Itokawa of the University of Tokyo in charge, and it was 23 centimetres long. It was fired horizontally, in a facility converted from a semi-underground firearms range. On 12 April a public test firing was held in front of the press.

Japan’s space programme began not by flying up into the sky but by flying sideways. A pencil-like rocket 23 centimetres long, parallel to the ground, punching through one screen after another. Space was still a very long way off, but someone, somewhere, had to fire the first one. That was Kokubunji. The encyclopedia notes that the city now holds events on 12 April as “Kokubunji Pencil Rocket Day.”

That same year, 1955, in Sunagawa, Tachikawa, where the Kokubunji Cliff Line begins, the movement against the expansion of the US military’s Tachikawa Air Base, known as the Sunagawa Struggle, began. Tachikawa City’s walking map records it. (After the Second World War the old Japanese army airfield in Tachikawa became a large US base, and plans to lengthen its runway into Sunagawa’s farmland met fierce local resistance.) At the start of the cliff, a fight over a runway broke out; in the town the cliff runs through, Japan’s first rocket was flying sideways. On one and the same cliff, in the same year, two events about the sky.

The Musashi Kokubunji ruins bear Showa-era scars too. According to the historical park guidebook, at the Golden Hall there was a large Japanese red pine said to have been planted by Nitta Yoshisada himself, long loved as the symbol of the historic site. But day-trippers made a bonfire at its roots, the pine died, and it was cut down on 7 June 1965 (Showa 40). In 1968 a cultural-properties survey committee member from Maebashi, in Gunma, visited the site, learned what had happened and contacted Gunma Prefecture, and on 5 April that year Gunma Prefecture donated two Japanese black pines, the prefectural tree.

The day-trippers with their bonfire can never have imagined they would kill a pine said to have been planted by a warlord more than 600 years earlier. And Gunma, on hearing the news, sent its prefectural tree. A warlord of more than 600 years ago brought about an exchange of pines between two prefectures in the Showa era. The encyclopedia also records that in 1964 (Showa 39), a large unauthorised housing development took place in the nuns’ temple area, and the area now presumed to be the site of the Lecture Hall was destroyed without being surveyed. The ancient temple stood right at the waterline of Showa-era development.

Above and below the cliff: Tonogayato Garden and the Kyoso-no-Mori

Right by the South Exit of Kokubunji Station there is another garden that makes use of the cliff: Tonogayato Garden.

According to Kokubunji City’s tourism site, it was originally the villa of the businessman Teijo Eguchi (江口定條); in 1929 (Showa 4) it was bought by Hikoyata Iwasaki, grandson of Yataro Iwasaki, the founder of Mitsubishi, who made it into a strolling garden mixing Japanese and Western styles. He linked the lawn on top of the cliff with the springs and pond below, and built a sukiya-style teahouse, the Koyo-tei (“Autumn Leaves Pavilion”). The difference in height within the garden is about 10 metres. Water springing from the cliff flows into Jiro Benten Pond, and the water at the spring stays at 15 to 18°C all year round.

This garden, too, faced a crisis in the Showa era. In the late 1960s and early 1970s a development plan to turn the area in front of the station into a commercial district threatened its survival, and residents launched a movement to save it. In 1974 (Showa 49) the Tokyo Metropolitan Government bought it and made it a metropolitan park, and in 2011 (Heisei 23) it was designated a national Place of Scenic Beauty.

About 200 Japanese maples are planted there, and the autumn colours usually peak from late November to early December. If you visit in autumn, come here. Look down on the maples from the top of the cliff, then up at them from the bottom. A garden with a 10-metre drop lets you enjoy one tree twice.

Up on top of the cliff, in Higashi-Koigakubo, there is another forest. According to the Bureau of Construction, the Nogawa River rises in the Great Pond on the grounds of Hitachi’s Central Research Laboratory in Higashi-Koigakubo, Kokubunji. Kokubunji City’s tourism site introduces the garden of this research centre, founded as the Central Research Laboratory in 1942 (Showa 17), as the “Kyoso-no-Mori” (Forest of Co-creation), and says it is opened to the public only twice a year, in spring and autumn. The original trees were kept because of the wishes of the founding president, Namihei Odaira: “Do not cut good standing trees; build around them.”

At the heart of a research laboratory lies the source of the Nogawa River. Because they built around the trees instead of cutting them down, the beginning of a river was protected. There cannot be many research labs in Japan that hold the source of a river.

The hake goes home to Tachikawa

After a day walking Kokubunji, I come back to my opening mystery.

The Kokubunji Cliff Line begins around Sunagawa Kyuban in Tachikawa. It is the cliff formed when the ancient Tama River cut into the Musashino surface as it made the Tachikawa surface. Below that cliff, on the terrace that bears Tachikawa’s name, the people of the Nara period built Musashi Kokubunji, because there they had water springing from the cliff, flat land spread out in front, and a highway running past to the west. The cliff is called after Kokubunji because the temple stood at its finest stretch.

Tachikawa holds the start of the cliff; Kokubunji holds its showpiece. The two towns sit at the end and the middle of one and the same step in the land.

And on the same day in 1889, the same railway gave both towns a station. Those tracks still run along near the cliff, linking Tachikawa and Kokubunji.

When you get back to Tachikawa, look out towards Sunagawa. Out there, beyond the flat fields and houses, the hake begins, noticed by almost no one. The very first step of a cliff that, 30 kilometres on, becomes a ravine in Setagaya.

Answer to the detour quiz

The answer is (B), about 60 metres. According to Kokubunji City’s tourism site, Musashi Kokubunji’s seven-storey pagoda is thought to have been about 60 metres tall. It burned after a lightning strike in 835 and was rebuilt a dozen or so years later. At the Otaka-no-Michi Spring Garden there is a one-tenth-scale model of how it is thought to have looked.

Before you go

• Getting there: from JR Tachikawa Station, take the Chuo Line to Kokubunji Station. On a Rapid it comes after Kunitachi and Nishi-Kokubunji; a Chuo Special Rapid stops next at Kokubunji after leaving Tachikawa (stopping patterns vary by train, so check JR’s information). The nearest station to the Musashi Kokubunji ruins is Nishi-Kokubunji, two stops from Tachikawa.
• From Shinjuku: take the JR Chuo Line (Rapid or Special Rapid) heading west towards Tachikawa and get off at Kokubunji.
• Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO; it makes hopping between Kokubunji and Nishi-Kokubunji easy.
• Walking route: from Kokubunji Station’s South Exit, head down to the south-west and walk the Otaka-no-Michi and Masugata Pond Springs (3 Higashi-Motomachi and 1 Nishi-Motomachi, Kokubunji), the Otaka-no-Michi Spring Garden and the Musashi Kokubunji Ruins Museum, Kokubunji’s Yakushi hall and Niomon gate, the Musashi Kokubunji ruins (monks’ temple), the Tosando Musashi-michi site and the Musashi Kokubunji nuns’ temple ruins, then come out at Nishi-Kokubunji Station. That takes you along the foot of the cliff with no backtracking. According to Kokubunji City’s tourism site, it is about 300 metres, around 5 minutes on foot, from the museum to the temple ruins.
• The Otaka-no-Michi Spring Garden is a park facility with an admission charge. Check opening hours, closing days and admission on Kokubunji City’s official pages. Free historic-site guiding by citizen volunteers is also available (advance application required): https://www.city.kokubunji.tokyo.jp/culture-sports-tourism/culture/1011900/1024896.html (historical park guidebook)
• Kokubunji City Historical Park and the Musashi Kokubunji ruins: https://www.city.kokubunji.tokyo.jp/shisetsu/kouen/1036960/index.html
• Kokubunji City tourism and city promotion site (walking routes, spots): https://kokubunji-citypro.jp/
• “57 Famous Springs of Tokyo: Otaka-no-Michi and Masugata Pond Springs” (Tokyo Metropolitan Government Bureau of Environment): https://www.kankyo.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/water/conservation/spring_water/tokyo/place_38.html
• Tonogayato Garden is a metropolitan garden right by Kokubunji Station’s South Exit. The autumn colours usually peak from late November to early December. Hitachi’s Kyoso-no-Mori can only be entered on its spring and autumn open days. Check open days and admission on the official sites before you go.
• Etiquette: the springs and the stream along Otaka-no-Michi are protected; look at the carp and the water, but don’t wade in or take plants. Masugata Pond has a shrine to Benzaiten, and the Yakushi hall is an active place of worship.
• To combine: on the way there or back, stop at Sunagawa in Tachikawa and walk near the start of the Kokubunji Cliff Line and along the Tamagawa Aqueduct. That joins this article in one line with this series’ articles on the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa, and on the Yagawa and the hake.

Home again: Tachikawa Station North Exit

Down the cliff, and up again. Walk from Otaka-no-Michi to the Musashi Kokubunji ruins and on to Nishi-Kokubunji, and you have used your legs more than you thought. The path beside the springs is cool even in summer, and from autumn into winter your body may have got chilled.

Back in Tachikawa on the Chuo Line, a one-minute walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. It is a hot yoga studio where classes are held on heated lava stone, and it also offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training. There are more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so you can still make it after seeing the autumn leaves at Tonogayato Garden.

A trial yoga lesson for first-timers costs ¥1,980 (tax included), with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat included as rentals. 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

Back in the town where the cliff begins, in a warm room, you let out a long, slow breath. The way the hake lets out its water.

Cover photo: Masugata Pond in Nishi-Motomachi, Kokubunji, one of the Otaka-no-Michi and Masugata Pond Springs. (Photo: Miyuki Meinaka / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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