Kunitachi Walk from Tachikawa: Daigaku-dori, History and Yaho Tenmangu

Showa-era Kunitachi: queues at the Scala-za and “Kunikō fever”

Kunitachi City’s “History of Kunitachi” pages capture, in a few short passages, the texture of the town in the Showa era.

Wartime evacuation and post-war housing reconstruction sent Yaho Village’s population soaring. In 1965 (Showa 40) the Fujimidai housing estate, built by the Japan Housing Corporation for some 8,000 residents, was completed, and the population leapt past 50,000. Then, on 1 January 1967 (Showa 42), Kunitachi City was born.

Among its memories of Showa-era Kunitachi, the city picks out two scenes. One is the cinema. On Asahi-dori stood the Kunitachi Scala-za, the only cinema in town, crowded every day with more than a thousand film fans. It closed in 1986 (Showa 61). The other is baseball. In 1980 (Showa 55), Tokyo Metropolitan Kunitachi High School became the first Tokyo public high school to play at Koshien, the national high school baseball tournament that all of Japan watches every summer. The whole town, it is said, was swept up in “Kunikō fever” (Kunikō being the school’s nickname).

Tachikawa next door had its own film-town side. According to Tachikawa City’s chronology, Tachikawa’s first cinema, the Tachikawa Kinema, opened in 1925 (Taisho 14). As I wrote in this series’ article on Cinema City, there was a theatre on the North Exit side opened with money from local shopkeepers and residents, and the company that began showing films there in 1951 (Showa 26) later built Tokyo’s first multiplex. Some people would have queued on Asahi-dori; others would have ridden one stop to a theatre in Tachikawa. The distance of one station was also the distance between two choices of film for the evening.

In those days, when you passed through the ticket gate at Kunitachi Station, you went out through the door of the red-roofed wooden station building onto the roundabout in front. There were queues outside the cinema on Asahi-dori, and at the end of one summer the whole town was giddy because a public school’s baseball team was going to Koshien. Today the Chuo Line runs on an elevated track and the station is new. The triangular-roofed building finished its 80 years as a station and was taken down in 2006 (Heisei 18) for the work to elevate the Chuo Line.

This is where Kunitachi gets interesting. In response to people’s regret at losing it, the city stored the parts and rebuilt the station almost exactly where it had been, in its original form. In April 2020 (Reiwa 2), the Former Kunitachi Station Building came back, not as a station but as a “hub for sharing the town’s appeal.” White walls, the asymmetrical red triangular roof, arched dormer windows. Step inside and you will find the ticket gate and the old ticket windows recreated with their Taisho-era atmosphere intact. The catchphrase the city gave the building is “Sankaku-yane de machiawase,” “Meet under the triangular roof.” It is a pun: “machiawase” means meeting up with someone, the old job of a station, but written differently it can also mean “meeting the town.” People who knew Showa-era Kunitachi remember their old meetings under this roof. Young people who never knew it meet a Taisho-era station here for the first time.

To take down a station and rebuild it in the same spot. A painstaking way of choosing, and very much in character for a town that once chose to become an education district.

Yaho Tenmangu: the oldest Tenmangu in eastern Japan and the origin of “yaboten”

Walk straight south down Daigaku-dori and you reach Yaho Station on the JR Nambu Line. From there, the official directions say, the shrine is a three-minute walk. If you are coming from Tachikawa, the Nambu Line gets you to Yaho Station in about six minutes, according to Kunitachi City.

A Tenmangu is a shrine to Sugawara no Michizane, a ninth-century scholar and statesman who was deified as Tenjin, the god of learning. Yaho Tenmangu’s history goes back to the Heian period (794–1185). According to the shrine’s official website, in 901 (Shotai 4), when Sugawara no Michizane was demoted and sent away to Dazaifu in Tsukushi (in today’s Kyushu), his third son, Michitake, was exiled to Kurihara-go in Bubai-no-sho, Tama District, Musashi Province, which is today’s Yaho in Kunitachi. In 903 (Engi 3), on hearing of his father’s death, Michitake carved an image of him and enshrined it in his memory. That, it is said, was the beginning of Yaho Tenmangu. In 1885 (Meiji 18) it became a prefectural shrine, and as the oldest Tenmangu in eastern Japan it is counted, along with Yushima Tenjin and Kameido Tenjin in Tokyo, as one of the “Three Tenjin of Kanto.”

The first surprise on entering the grounds is that the approach goes downhill. According to the shrine’s website, until around the 17th century the Koshu Kaido passed below the Tachikawa Terrace in the Yaho area. The shrine buildings were therefore built facing south onto the highway. When the highway moved up onto the terrace, the flow of people changed, and worshippers began to come from the side of today’s Koshu Kaido and Yaho Station, down through the shrine forest to the buildings. At most shrines you climb up to pray. Here you go down. When the highway moved house, the god stayed put.

The treasures are old too. According to Kunitachi City’s cultural properties page, the wooden plaque inscribed “Tenmangu” dates from 1275 (Kenji 1) in the Kamakura period and is an Important Cultural Property of Japan. It was written by Fujiwara no Tsunetomo of the Sesonji family, famous calligraphers. A pair of wooden lion-dogs (komainu, the guardian figures you see at shrine gates) that once stood in the main hall are also Important Cultural Properties, thought to date from the late 13th century, and traces remain showing that their whiskers were made of copper wire set into the wood. Kamakura-era guardian lions with wire whiskers: picture it, and they become rather endearing. According to the shrine, another “Tenmangu” plaque was presented by the Mito Tokugawa family, one of the three senior branches of the shogun’s clan, in 1690 (Genroku 3).

Yaho Tenmangu has one more claim to fame: a theory about where the word “yaboten” comes from. In Japanese, “yabo” means unsophisticated, boorish, the opposite of stylish; a “yaboten” is a hopeless boor. The story goes that the Edo-era comic poet Ota Nanpo wrote a kyoka (a playful, satirical 31-syllable poem) that ran: “If you were a god, you ought to go to Izumo; instead you hold your unveiling in Mejiro: yabo no Tenjin.” Izumo is where, by tradition, Japan’s gods gather once a year; Mejiro is a district of Edo where the Yaho deity had been taken to be shown to the public. The poem teased the Yaho Tenjin for being “yabo,” uncool, and from “yabo no Tenjin” the word “yaboten” was supposedly born.

There is a catch, though. The Nihon Kokugo Daijiten, the great historical dictionary of the Japanese language, gives as its earliest recorded use of “yaboten” a line from “Koshoku Tsuhen Uta-ura,” an ukiyo-zoshi (popular novel) of 1688 (Genroku 1). Ota Nanpo was born in 1749 (Kan’en 2). So the word “yaboten” already existed sixty years before Nanpo was born. The encyclopedia, too, says the Nanpo anecdote is thought to have been attached later. A famous word-origin site that, once you open a dictionary, turns out not to be one. A rather yabo ending. Even so, the very fact that the poem survives shows that Edo people knew and loved this shrine as the “yabo” Tenjin.

While we are at it, a note on pronunciation. The address of the shrine’s official website is “yabotenmangu”: the shrine calls itself “Yabo.” The Nambu Line station, on the other hand, is read “Yaho.” According to the encyclopedia, when the Nambu Railway opened Yaho Station it named it “Yaho,” and the place name came to be read that way too, but the original reading is “Yabo.” You hear “Yaho” at the station and read “Yabo” in the shrine grounds. Hunting for that one missing voicing mark is one more way to walk Yaho.

And then a connection with Tachikawa turns up from an unexpected direction.

The shrine calls itself “the birthplace of prayers for road safety.” The origin is an event on 1 August 1908 (Meiji 41). According to an article in Kuruma News, a Japanese car news site, Prince Arisugawa Takehito, a member of the imperial family, called for Japan’s first “toonorikai,” a long-distance drive or, as we would say today, a driving tour. About 11 cars gathered at Hibiya Park, and with the Prince’s Darracq leading, followed by the Takuri, said to be the first Japanese-made petrol car, and others, they formed a procession. The route left Hibiya Park, ran west along the Koshu Kaido, turned back at Tachikawa, “the end of the road,” then called at Yaho Tenmangu on the way home. In those days there was no bridge across the Tama River on the Koshu Kaido, so Tachikawa was where the road ended. The encyclopedia also describes it as a drive along the Koshu Kaido as far as Tachikawa.

The party had lunch in the shrine’s plum grove. In the grounds stands a monument to Prince Arisugawa Takehito, and the shrine holds a classic car festival to commemorate Japan’s first long-distance drive by petrol car. At the “117th Anniversary Yaho Tenmangu Classic Car Festival” on 14 December 2025, the shrine reports, 190 vehicles gathered, from pre-war models to Showa-era classics and supercars.

Open Tachikawa’s chronology at this point and the story clicks into place. According to Tachikawa City, the Hino Bridge opened in 1926 (Taisho 15). In 1908, Tachikawa was quite literally the end of the Koshu Kaido, and Japan’s first driving party made its U-turn on the riverbank at Tachikawa. Japanese motoring, you could say, began by turning round in Tachikawa. Does that sound like an exaggeration? It is an exaggeration. But it is not untrue.

The shrine’s ties also reach west. Haijima Tenjinja Shrine in Akishima is said to have received a share of Yaho Tenmangu’s deity during the Bunroku era (1592–1596). With Tachikawa in between, the Tenjin has a parent in Yaho to the east and a child in Haijima to the west. The year 2027 (Reiwa 9) marks 1,125 years since Michizane’s death, and the shrine plans its once-every-25-years grand festival. The procession of the deity is announced as leaving the shrine, going round the front of Kunitachi Station and returning along Daigaku-dori. The Tenjin of Yaho making a lap of the new town to which its place name was given up. I would like to see that once.

Kunitachi below the hake: springs, rice fields and four stone rods

Head south from behind the shrine and Kunitachi’s other face appears.

Kunitachi City describes its appeal as “two faces.” One is Daigaku-dori. The other is the farmland in the south. There, a line of terrace cliffs called “hake” runs across the land, spring water flows at the foot of the hake, and the nature around it is beautiful in every season. A Kunitachi completely different from Daigaku-dori, the city says. According to the city, the land falls into three levels, from the Tachikawa Terrace in the north, south to the Aoyagi Terrace and then the paddy-field zone. That step in the land is also why the shrine became a “downhill” shrine.

On the south side of the shrine grounds spreads Benten Pond. According to the shrine, the area has been blessed with springs since ancient times and symbolises Yaho’s natural environment. Hydrangeas bloom around the pond in early summer.

The land at the foot of the cliff has yielded unexpected things. According to Kunitachi City, an excavation in 2012 (Heisei 24) at the Midorikawa-higashi site in Aoyagi found four large Jomon-period stone rods. The longest is 112.5 centimetres, the heaviest 30.8 kilograms. They date from about 4,000 years ago, from the end of the Middle Jomon to the beginning of the Late Jomon period, and the four, almost perfectly intact, had been laid in two facing pairs with a space between them. Stone rods, like the clay dogu figurines, were ritual objects of the Jomon people, Japan’s prehistoric hunter-gatherers, but they are usually found burned or broken, so it is hard to tell how they were buried. Four found nearly complete and laid in a row was a first for Japan. In 2017 (Heisei 29) they became an Important Cultural Property, the first owned by Kunitachi City to be so designated. In 2018 they were also shown at the special exhibition “JOMON: 10,000 Years of Prehistoric Art in Japan” at the Tokyo National Museum.

The city’s explanation ends with a rather nice sentence. Because the site was unlike anything seen before, it says, it has stirred controversy among archaeologists, and further research is hoped for. What did the people of Kunitachi pray for 4,000 years ago, before those four stone rods? No one has the answer yet. The rods are on permanent display at the Kunitachi Kyodo Bunkakan (Kunitachi Local Culture Museum).

Also in the south, beside the Yagawa stream, is Takinogawa Gakuen. According to the city, it was Japan’s first institution for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, and its main building, completed in 1928 (Showa 3), is the oldest surviving building for the education of disabled children in the country. The “Angel’s Piano” played by Fudeko Ishii, wife of the founder, is said to be the oldest upright piano surviving in Japan. Near Shiroyama there is also an old thatched farmhouse, the main house of a farm in use since the Edo period, restored.

Anyone who has come down Daigaku-dori from the station realises it here. Kunitachi’s history did not begin in the new town to the north. It began in Yaho at the foot of the cliff. There were springs, rice fields and the Tenjin, and 4,000 years ago someone laid out stone rods in a row. The college town that arrived in the northern forest at the end of the Taisho era is just the newest page of that long history.

And in the heading of that page, the town’s name contains one character from Tachikawa next door.

Answer to the detour quiz

The answer is (A), pelicans. According to Kunitachi City’s page on the Former Kunitachi Station Building, when the development began, a waterfowl house was placed in the circular park at the centre of the station square, where pelicans were kept; the square was planned as a place for people to gather.

Before you go

• Getting there from Tachikawa: Kunitachi is the next station from Tachikawa on the JR Chuo Line, heading towards Tokyo. On the JR Nambu Line, according to Kunitachi City, it is about 4 minutes from Tachikawa to Yagawa Station and about 6 minutes to Yaho Station. Walk south down Daigaku-dori from Kunitachi Station to Yaho Station, then take the Nambu Line back to Tachikawa, and you have a walk with no backtracking.
• From Shinjuku: take the JR Chuo Line towards Tachikawa and get off at Kunitachi, the stop before Tachikawa.
• Carry an IC card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on the JR Chuo and Nambu lines and on local buses.
• Daigaku-dori and Hitotsubashi University: right outside Kunitachi Station’s South Exit. You may enter the Hitotsubashi campus after completing a procedure at the guardhouse, but as a rule Kanematsu Auditorium and the other buildings are closed to the public. On some days, such as entrance exam days, entry to the campus may be restricted (according to Kunitachi City’s cultural properties information). Remember it is a working university; keep your voice down.
• Former Kunitachi Station Building: in front of the South Exit of Kunitachi Station. Check opening hours and events on the official site: https://www.city.kunitachi.tokyo.jp/kyukunitachiekisha_specialsite/index.html
• Yaho Tenmangu Shrine: 5208 Yaho, Kunitachi. A 3-minute walk from Yaho Station on the JR Nambu Line, or about 10 minutes by bus from Kunitachi Station to the “Yaho Tenjin” stop (according to the shrine). Check visiting hours on the official site: https://www.yabotenmangu.or.jp/ . The plum festival is held in February each year, and the main annual festival on the weekend nearest 25 September. It is a place of worship: bow at the torii gate if you like, keep to the edges of the path, and follow any signs about photography.
• Kunitachi Kyodo Bunkakan (Kunitachi Local Culture Museum; the Midorikawa-higashi stone rods are on permanent display): 6231 Yaho, Kunitachi. A 10-minute walk south from Yagawa Station on the JR Nambu Line. Check opening hours and closing days on the city’s page: https://www.city.kunitachi.tokyo.jp/bunka/bunkazai/9918.html
• To combine: the Musical Instrument Museum of Kunitachi College of Music, the college that carries Kunitachi’s name, is now in Kashiwacho, Tachikawa. Go as far as Haijima Tenjinja in Akishima, which enshrines a share of Yaho Tenmangu’s deity, and you will have seen the Tenjin on both sides of Tachikawa, east and west.
• Kunitachi City sightseeing and town information (Japanese): https://www.city.kunitachi.tokyo.jp/bunka/kanko/1/index.html

One stop back: Tachikawa Station North Exit

You walk Daigaku-dori from end to end, go down the steps to the shrine and peer into the springs below the hake. The distance tells on your legs more than the map suggests. Take the Nambu Line back and you are at Tachikawa Station in about six minutes.

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.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. Whether you walk Daigaku-dori in the morning or see the shrine’s plum blossoms in the late afternoon, there is time to drop in on the way home.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 (tax included), with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat included as rentals, so you can come straight 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

In the town that was once “the end of the road,” where a Meiji-era motorcade turned back, you can now turn your own body round, slowly.

Cover photo: Daigaku-dori running south from Kunitachi Station, lined on both sides with cherry trees in full bloom. (Photo: 江戸村のとくぞう / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

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