Mount Mitake Day Trip from Tachikawa: Wolf Shrine, Valley Walk Guide

Mount Mitake starts at Tachikawa: the Ome Line leads to Kanto’s steepest cable car, a shrine guarded by a wolf, pilgrim lodges and a painter’s beloved valley.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

The official website of Musashi Mitake Shrine has a page on how to get there. When I read the name of the first station on it, I couldn’t help smiling.

“By JR Chuo Line or JR Nambu Line to JR Tachikawa Station → (approx. 30 min) → JR Ome Station → (approx. 20 min) → JR Mitake Station.”

Not Shinjuku. Not Tokyo Station. A shrine on top of a 929-metre mountain, one of the great sacred peaks of the Kanto region, begins its directions for pilgrims at Tachikawa.

When you think about it, perhaps that is only natural. Whether you come on the Chuo Line or the Nambu Line, anyone heading for Mount Mitake changes to the Ome Line at Tachikawa. Tachikawa is the entrance to this mountain. And yet the entrance has no idea. In all my time at Tachikawa Station, nobody has ever told me, “This is the front door to Mount Mitake.”

How far into the mountains does the road from Tachikawa really reach? And what is waiting at the end of it? I decided to find out, starting from the Ome Line platform at Tachikawa Station.

The way in to Mount Mitake: from Tachikawa to Mitake Station

From Tachikawa you take the Ome Line, first to Ome Station, about 30 minutes according to the shrine. There you change to a train bound for Okutama, and about 20 minutes later you arrive at Mitake Station (御嶽駅).

There was a time when one train took you all the way from Tachikawa to Okutama. According to railway records, with the timetable revision of March 2023 the section beyond Ome became four-car, driver-only operation, and through trains from the Chuo Line were cut back to Ome. Now you change once, at Ome. Step across the platform onto the short train waiting opposite, and the view from the window turns the colour of the mountains all at once.

Weekend excursion trains have a long history here. According to the records, the Ome Line at first could not run through to the Chuo Line because its tracks were a different gauge, but after the gauge was widened and the line electrified, in the 1930s and early 1940s, sightseeing specials are said to have run through from the Chuo Line. Those were the forerunners of the later “Holiday Rapid” trains. There was even a “Holiday Rapid Mitake” that started from Mitake Station, but it last ran in 2001. The records say Mitake Station’s platform is wide because it is a relic of the days when this was a terminus welcoming crowds of day-trippers. Older readers may remember a holiday-morning train that took them from Shinjuku or Tachikawa to the mountains without a change. For younger readers, the change at Ome is simply how it is. On the same track, the way to Mount Mitake depends on which generation you belong to.

The section beyond Ome has a nickname: the Tokyo Adventure Line. According to railway records, the name was given in September 2018. People in central Tokyo may raise an eyebrow at the idea of adventure in Tokyo. But from about Futamatao onwards, the track threads its way along the edge of the Tama River gorge, and you realise the sign is not lying.

Mitake Station’s building looks like a temple or a shrine, with a tiled roof topped by a decorative curved gable. According to the records, in 1999 it was chosen as one of the “100 Best Stations in Kanto,” because “its platform sits on the mountainside and its station building is in an old-fashioned shrine style.” The station itself is already part of the approach to the shrine.

This station has one more connection with Tachikawa.

The Ome Line began as the Ome Railway, which opened between Tachikawa and Ome in 1894. The company later renamed itself the Ome Electric Railway, and in September 1929 it extended its line from Futamatao. Where did it end? Here, at Mitake. Until the company was bought out by the state in 1944, Mitake was the terminus of a private railway that began in Tachikawa. The mountain station where the line out of Tachikawa finally came to rest: that is this place.

Then who laid the track beyond Mitake? The answer is surprisingly close to Tachikawa.

The mountain railway company with its head office by Tachikawa Station

The roughly 10 kilometres of track from Mitake to Okutama Station were laid by a company called the Okutama Electric Railway.

Today the company is called Okutama Kogyo. According to its official history, Asano Cement developed a limestone bed exposed in the Nippara district of Okutama, and in 1937 the Okutama Electric Railway was created to carry the limestone. It took seven years to lay 9.76 kilometres of railway, but this was wartime, and soon after completion the line was bought by the government, beginning service in July 1944 as part of the national railways’ Ome Line. The company changed its name to Okutama Kogyo, and freight trains carrying limestone from its works were, it says, a much-loved symbol of the Ome Line until 1998.

Open Okutama Kogyo’s company profile and the head office address reads: “1-18-2 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo.”

That is a short walk from Tachikawa Station’s North Exit. The company that quarried stone in the Okutama mountains and laid the track beyond Mitake has its head office right by the station in Tachikawa. Of all the people who pass that building every day, I wonder how many have travelled on that company’s track to Mount Mitake. I was about to become one of them, and until today I had no idea.

Enough of rails and rocks. Step out of the ticket gate at Mitake Station and the gorge of the Tama River opens right in front of you. Before heading up the mountain, I go down to the water first.

Mitake Valley: upstream of the water that flows to Tachikawa

Mitake Valley (御岳渓谷, Mitake Keikoku) is the gorge of the Tama River just below Mitake Station. According to the Ome Tourism Association, a riverside walking path runs for about 4 kilometres along both banks, centred on Mitake Station. Its upstream end is roughly halfway between Mitake and Kawai stations; its downstream end is a little above Ikusabata Station. The path takes you past the Gyokudo Art Museum and the Ozawa Shuzo sake brewery.

Ome City writes that Mitake Valley was selected in 1985 as one of Japan’s “100 Exquisite and Well-Conserved Waters.” Big boulders lie along both banks; the water foams white between the rocks and sinks into deep green in the pools. In the fresh green of spring and in autumn colour, it gets especially busy.

Here I find myself thinking about where this water is going.

The Tama River rises on Mount Kasatori in Yamanashi Prefecture and flows into Tokyo Bay. It is 138 kilometres long. According to the encyclopedia, it leaves the mountains around Ome, builds a great alluvial fan, joins the Aki River near Akishima, and flows down between the Musashino Plateau and the Tama Hills. It is the same Tama River that runs along the southern edge of Tachikawa. The water you see from the green path along the Negawa stream has come down through this gorge.

The same water reaches Tachikawa by another route too. Shogakukan’s Digital Daijisen dictionary, in its entry for Ome, says “the Mitake stream has been a source of water supply since the Edo period.” Part of the water that flows down Mitake Valley is drawn off at the intake at Hamura into the Tamagawa Aqueduct (玉川上水, Tamagawa Josui), a canal dug in the 17th century to supply Edo, as Tokyo was then called. The aqueduct runs for about 5.6 kilometres along the northern edge of Tachikawa, and the stretch down to the Kodaira monitoring station in the city’s Saiwaicho district still carries raw water for Tokyo’s water supply, just as it has since it was first dug. I wrote about it in this series’ Tamagawa Aqueduct article.

In other words, both the aqueduct to the north of Tachikawa and the Tama River to the south carry water that has come through this gorge. Without knowing it, the people of Tachikawa live sandwiched between two streams of Mitake Valley water.

The valley also keeps a record of the fight against water. The Takimoto flood-defence stone, near the Nishi Tokyo Bus turnaround at the foot of the cable car, is a late-Edo-period erosion-control relic. According to Ome City, the Takimoto stream burst its banks in 1742 and 1859, causing great damage to the area. Kitajima Samon, the village headman, set this stone in place after the great flood of 1859, praying for the safety of the residents, and had the facts of the two great floods carved on it. On the banks of the Negawa in Tachikawa, too, memories of Tama River floods survive. Upstream and downstream have shared both the gifts and the dangers of the same river.

Mount Mitake and Mitake Valley in numbers

• 929 — metres, the height of Mount Mitake. The altitude of a sacred mountain you can reach and return from in a day, starting from a platform at Tachikawa.
• 25 — degrees, the steepest gradient on the cable car. Mitake Tozan Railway calls it “the steepest in Kanto.” Just standing up at that angle is a form of ascetic training.
• 6 — minutes on the cable car, from Takimoto Station at the bottom to Mitakesan Station at 831 metres.
• 330 — roughly the number of steps in the final staircase between the cable car station and the shrine. Whatever height you gained in six minutes, your legs pay for here.
• 20+ — the number of shukubo, pilgrims’ lodges, lined up on the mountain top. This is a mountain where you stay not in a hut but in a pilgrims’ inn.
• 4 — kilometres, the length of the valley walk along both banks of the Tama River, centred on Mitake Station.

A detour quiz

On Musashi Mitake Shrine’s “Oinu-sama” talisman, what shape is drawn in the wolf’s eye? (A) A crescent moon (B) A star (C) The sun. You will find the answer further up the mountain.

With the sound of the river at my back, I take the bus to the foot of the cable car. From here on, the world is on a slant.

The steepest in Kanto: the Mount Mitake cable car

From Mitake Station, a Nishi Tokyo Bus takes about 10 minutes to the terminus, Cable-shita (“below the cable car”). A short walk up the slope brings you to Takimoto Station, the bottom station of the Mitake Tozan Railway cable car.

Mitake Tozan Railway introduces it as “the steepest cable car in Kanto.” It climbs a line with an average gradient of 22 degrees and a maximum of 25, reaching Mitakesan Station, 831 metres above sea level, just six minutes after leaving Takimoto. According to railway records, the line is 1,107 metres long with a difference in height of 423.6 metres. In six minutes you rise further than Tokyo Tower is tall.

The floor of the car is stepped like a staircase. Stand in it and you can feel your body being gently pulled backwards. According to the records, there is no driver’s cab in the car; the driver operates it from Mitakesan Station at the top. The person moving the car you are riding in is far above you. The passengers rise on the slant, entrusting their lives to someone they cannot see. As an entrance to a sacred place, it is rather a nice piece of staging.

The company was founded on 20 November 1927, according to its profile. According to the records, the cable car opened on 31 December 1934. It opened on New Year’s Eve, and there could be no better day to start carrying people up the mountain for the first shrine visit of the year, hatsumode. During the war, in 1944, it was suspended as a non-essential line, and it is recorded as resuming service in 1951.

This cable car carries passengers you don’t see on many others: dogs. Because the shrine on the mountain worships a wolf as a god, many people bring their dogs to pray with them. According to Mitake Tozan Railway, there are “pet spaces” at the very front and very back of each car, and even large dogs can ride. According to the records, more than 10,000 dogs ride it every year. On the slanted car, people and dogs sit side by side, looking up at the same view.

Let me tell you a little about the Showa era here (the Showa era ran from 1926 to 1989).

Mitake Tozan Railway has announced that from July 2026 it is selling boxed sweets that recreate the “Aozora” (“Blue Sky”), a cable car that ran in a blue-based livery until 2008. According to railway records, the second-generation cars, which ran from 1968 to 2008, were named “Hinode” (“Sunrise”) and “Aozora.” Older visitors may remember white cars, one with its lower half in red, the “Hinode,” and one in blue, the “Aozora,” passing each other halfway up the slope.

Then, the Aozora carried people up the mountain. Now, the Aozora has become a box of sweets on the shelf of a souvenir shop. The form has changed, but the name has never left the mountain.

Musashi Mitake Shrine, where the god is a wolf

From Mitakesan Station to the shrine is about 25 minutes on foot. According to Musashi Mitake Shrine, the path is paved and flat for six or seven minutes, but once you enter the settlement of pilgrims’ lodges it soon turns into a steep slope, and after a lane of souvenir shops there are about 330 steps waiting for you. High heels and sandals are not suitable, the shrine kindly notes. I would add: nor is being short of breath.

The shrine’s history goes back a long way. According to its website, it is said to have been founded in the seventh year of the reign of Emperor Sujin, the tenth emperor of Japan, a figure of legend. The oldest written record says that in 736 the monk Gyoki enshrined an image of Kongo Zao Gongen here to pray for the protection of the eastern provinces, and from then on the mountain became known as a centre of Zao worship, Shugendo and mountain faith. In the Kamakura period (1185–1333) it was revered by powerful warriors; Hatakeyama Shigetada is said to have offered armour, saddles and swords. The National Treasure in the shrine’s Treasure Hall, a suit of armour laced with red cord, is the armour traditionally said to have been offered by him.

In the Edo period the mountain also became a guardian of Edo. When Tokugawa Ieyasu entered the Kanto in 1590, the shrine was granted an estate of 30 koku (a measure of rice yield). In 1606, on Ieyasu’s orders, Okubo Nagayasu supervised the rebuilding of the shrine, and the main building, which until then had faced south, was turned to face east, as the “western guardian” of Edo. The present offering hall and worship hall were built in 1700 on the orders of Tsunayoshi, the fifth shogun.

Okubo Nagayasu, the man who turned the shrine around, was also the man who, in the same year, built up the Ome Kaido road to carry Ome’s lime to Edo. The mountain’s shrine turned east to guard Edo; the mountain’s stone travelled east to whiten the walls of Edo Castle. This mountain has lived its life facing Edo.

And the star of this shrine is a wolf.

According to the shrine, when the legendary prince Yamato Takeru was on his campaign to the east, his path on this mountain was blocked by a white deer, an evil god in disguise, and he lost his way in the fog. A white wolf appeared and led his army to the north-west. The prince commanded the white wolf to remain on this mountain as Oguchi-no-Magami and drive away all evil. From around the Tenpo era of the Edo period (1830s), Oguchi-no-Magami became widely known as a god who protects against evil and theft, and people began to call it, affectionately, “Oinu-sama,” the honourable dog.

The shrine reveals that this “Oinu-sama” is in fact the Japanese wolf. Until not so long ago, it says, wolves and people coexisted on Mount Mitake. Wolves were frightening, but they were also welcome, because they ate the animals that ravaged the fields. The guardian beasts at the main sanctuary are not the usual Chinese lion-dogs but figures of Japanese wolves, made of bronze in the Edo period and dated 1783. The pair in front of the shrine buildings are the work of Kitamura Seibo, also the sculptor of the Peace Statue in Nagasaki, and were dedicated in 1985.

The Ome Municipal Museum of Local History holds the skull of a Japanese wolf, designated a tangible folk cultural property of the city. According to Ome City, it is thought to have been used as an object of worship or a tool for purification rites, and the woodblock that comes with it was used to print talismans for Musashi Mitake Shrine; the year 1819 is carved on its back. Two hundred years ago, wolf talismans printed on the mountain were guarding the doorways of homes in the villages below.