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」

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

Oshi and ko: why more than 20 pilgrims’ lodges line the mountain top

Walk the approach on Mount Mitake and you are surprised by how many grand houses stand there, far grander than you would expect on a mountain top. These are shukubo, pilgrims’ lodges. According to Mitake Tozan Railway, Mount Mitake prospered through the Mitake-ko, confraternities of mountain worship, and even today more than 20 lodges line the path, and anyone can stay at them. The Nihon Daihyakka Zensho encyclopedia described a settlement of about 40 oshi households along the approach, serving as lodgings for pilgrims.

Stone markers along the approach to Musashi Mitake Shrine, inscribed for the Mitake-ko pilgrim confraternities.
Stone markers along the approach to Musashi Mitake Shrine, inscribed for the Mitake-ko pilgrim confraternities.
Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Who are the oshi? Musashi Mitake Shrine explains that the name is said by some to be a shortening of “go-kitoshi,” “honourable prayer-master.” They were shrine priests who prayed for pilgrims, of course, but also guided them around the area, looked after their lodging, and travelled to distant places to spread the faith. There were once oshi all over Japan, but they disappeared over time. The oshi of this mountain, the shrine says, still carry on their traditional work together with the Mitake-ko all over the Kanto region.

The sentence in the shrine’s explanation that stopped me was this one. Because the shrine sits at the source of the Tama River, it was deeply revered as a god of agriculture who governs water by farmers along the river’s course.

Farmers along the Tama River. Tachikawa lies along that river too.

The oshi carried the shrine’s talismans on their backs down the mountain and spent days going from village to village, house to house, handing them out. The ko were organised by village or by clan and named after the hamlet or family, as “So-and-so Mitake-ko.” Every year, at a fixed season, each ko chose a few representatives to climb the mountain. With offerings of first rice and money collected from every household, they went to pray, led by an oshi. According to the shrine, the representative pilgrimage was popular not only for faith but because it came with sightseeing and fun, and it also became a place for representatives from different regions to exchange information. People even brought rice varieties resistant to drought, typhoons and pests to share.

Go up the mountain as your village’s representative, and come back with news of the rice in the next province while you’re at it. A pilgrimage of faith, an agricultural study tour and a bit of a jaunt, all in one. I imagine the mood in the village brightened a little each year over who would be chosen.

The custom still continues. According to the shrine, especially from autumn into winter the oshi come down the mountain to visit the ko in each area and deliver talismans house by house. In spring the representatives of the ko climb the mountain, and the sight of groups in suits and other formal clothes is, the shrine says, a seasonal sign of spring. Memorial stones of the various ko line the approach, and on them you can read place names from all over the Kanto region.

Read the stones one by one and you may come across the name of a town you know. Finding the name of the place you live, carved on a mountain top, is a strange experience. If you have come from Tachikawa, try walking along looking for Tama place names.

Stay the night at an oshi’s house on the mountain and the evening is quiet. Mitake Tozan Railway writes that if you stay at a lodge and you are lucky, you may see a sea of clouds. From the viewpoints looking out over the Kanto Plain, on a clear day you can see as far as Mount Tsukuba, and at night the lights of Tokyo and Yokohama spread out below. The lights of Tachikawa must be somewhere in there.

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The Jindai Zelkova, the Rock Garden and the tengu’s bench

On a sheer slope beside the approach stands a national natural monument, the Jindai Zelkova of Mount Mitake. According to Mitake Tozan Railway, it is estimated to be 1,200 years old, about 23 metres tall and about 8.2 metres around the trunk. The Nihon Daihyakka Zensho estimates its age at about 1,000 years. Either way, it is old enough that it could have been a sprout when Gyoki enshrined Zao Gongen on this mountain. To this tree, a difference of 200 years is presumably a rounding error.

Beyond the shrine, the roughly 1.5 kilometres from Tengu-iwa rock to Ayahiro Falls is called the Rock Garden. According to the Ome Tourism Association, it is Mount Mitake’s most popular hiking course, with strangely shaped rocks large and small and a clear stream running between mossy boulders, close to the cable car station and easy walking even for beginners. Allow about three hours for the round trip.

Ayahiro Falls has long been used as a site for Musashi Mitake Shrine’s rituals and is also called the “falls of ascetic purification.” Mitake Tozan Railway writes that pure white water falls from a height of 10 metres. At Nanayo Falls, seven tiers of falls large and small send up spray, the top tier dropping about 50 metres.

There is also a great tree called the Tengu’s Bench Cedar. From partway up the trunk of this 60-metre cedar, a branch grows horizontally for about a metre and then shoots straight up. It is said, Mitake Tozan Railway writes, that a tengu, a long-nosed mountain goblin, sits on this branch and looks down on people. Look up and it does indeed seem a comfortable branch to sit on. If a tengu is going to sit somewhere, he will naturally choose a seat with a view.

Summer on Mount Mitake has one more speciality: rengeshoma, the woodland “lotus anemone.” According to Mitake Tozan Railway, about 50,000 plants grow wild over about 30,000 square metres, one of the rarest colonies in Japan, and their pale purple flowers can be seen from late July to early September.

The valley where Kawai Gyokudo spent his last years

Down from the mountain, I return once more to Mitake Valley. About three minutes’ walk from Mitake Station, on the bank of the Tama River, is the Gyokudo Art Museum.

Kawai Gyokudo was a Japanese-style painter who depicted the landscapes of Japan through three eras, Meiji, Taisho and Showa. According to Ozawa Shuzo, which introduces the museum, Gyokudo spent more than ten years in Mitake, Ome City, from 1944 until his death in 1957. His love of nature and of people endeared him to the locals, and calls arose to build a museum in the Mitake Valley he loved. Generous donations came from the Empress, from various organisations, local volunteers and Gyokudo admirers all over Japan, and the museum opened in May 1961, four years after his death. The works range from sketches he made at about 15 to his last painting at 84, and the exhibition is changed seven times a year to match the seasons.

1944 was also the year the line laid by the Okutama Electric Railway opened beyond Mitake as part of the national Ome Line. In the last years of the war the painter came to this valley as an evacuee, and stayed on after the war.

Ome City’s chronology of the Showa era has a line connected with this museum. “Ome no Ayumi,” the city’s history, records that Emperor Showa and Empress Nagako visited the Gyokudo Art Museum. According to railway records, on 25 October 1961 the imperial train carrying the Emperor and Empress ran from Harajuku Station to Mitake Station and back. A special train was laid on from central Tokyo for a small museum in the mountains. It must have been the proudest day in the Showa history of Mitake Station.

Walk downstream along the valley path and you come to the brewery of Ozawa Shuzo. Its brand is Sawanoi. According to the company, documents from 1702 show that it was already brewing sake then, and it takes that year as its founding. The name “Sawanoi” comes from the old name of the place, Sawai village, and “Sawai” was itself named because abundant spring water flowed there as streams. The brewing water wells up from the back of a cave dug into bedrock of the Chichibu Paleozoic formation.

On the riverbank, within the company’s grounds, stands a small temple hall called Kanzan-ji. According to the company, the calligrapher Taguchi Beiho was entrusted with a wooden statue of the Buddha by the head priest of Hanshan Temple (Kanzan-ji) in Suzhou, China, and after he returned to Japan the hall was built here in 1930 with the cooperation of Ozawa Tahei.

The name Ozawa Tahei rang a bell. In a Rikkyo University paper on the origins of the Ome Railway, among the three men who in 1888 planned to quarry limestone at Hinatawada, the name Ozawa Tahei of Mitamura appears. The same name turns up among the people who set out to run a railway to Tachikawa. Whether it is the same man, or a later member of the family who inherited the name, I could not confirm in my research. But the story of the line to Tachikawa and the story of this riverside brewery touch at a single name.

Back to Tachikawa

The platform at Mitake Station sits on a ledge higher up the mountainside. While I wait for the train back, I look at the mountains across the valley.

The Britannica encyclopedia describes Mount Mitake as a mountain busy with summer school camps and Tokyoites at leisure. After the war years when the cable car stood idle, and once it started running again in 1951, the mountain became a destination for children and families. Today families come with their dogs and sit side by side on the slanted floor of the cable car. The faces have changed, but most of those who come here still change to the Ome Line at Tachikawa.

Tachikawa was the entrance to this mountain. The shrine starts its directions from Tachikawa; the private railway that started in Tachikawa chose the foot of this mountain as its terminus; the company that laid the track beyond has its head office by Tachikawa Station; and the water flowing to the north and south of Tachikawa has come down through this valley. It was only the entrance that didn’t know.

When the train I changed to at Ome comes out onto the plain, the window suddenly brightens. Beyond it, the flat sky of Tachikawa is waiting.

The quiz answer

The answer is (A), a crescent moon. According to Musashi Mitake Shrine, the wolf on the “Oinu-sama” talisman has a crescent moon in its eye because Japan’s three great Mitake shrines are likened to “snow, moon and flowers,” and Musashi Mitake Shrine is the “moon.” Ontake Shrine in Kiso is the “snow,” and Kanazakura Shrine on Mount Kinpu in Kofu is the “flowers.”

Before you go

  • Getting there: from JR Tachikawa Station, take the Ome Line to Ome (about 30 minutes), change to a train for Okutama and ride to Mitake Station (about 20 minutes) (according to Musashi Mitake Shrine’s access page). From Mitake Station, take a Nishi Tokyo Bus about 10 minutes to “Cable-shita,” then the cable car from Takimoto Station (about 6 minutes); from Mitakesan Station it is about 25 minutes on foot to the shrine. Trains beyond Ome are infrequent, so check the timetable first: https://musashimitakejinja.jp/information/access/
  • 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 and buses.
  • Cable car times and fares (fares were revised on 1 October 2026): Mitake Tozan Railway official site https://www.mitaketozan.co.jp/timetable.html . If you drive, both the shrine and the railway warn you to enter Mitake Tozan Railway’s Takimoto Station in your car navigation, not “Mount Mitake,” which leads to roads closed to traffic.
  • Musashi Mitake Shrine: 176 Mitakesan, Ome City. The Treasure Hall is open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays (according to the shrine): https://musashimitakejinja.jp/ . It is a place of worship; follow the etiquette at the halls and keep your voice down.
  • Staying overnight: there are more than 20 pilgrims’ lodges on Mount Mitake. You can look for accommodation through the Mitake-san Tourism Association listings (linked from Mitake Tozan Railway’s accommodation page): https://www.mitaketozan.co.jp/ti_hotel.html
  • Mitake Valley walk: about 4 kilometres along both banks of the Tama River, centred on Mitake Station, past the Gyokudo Art Museum and Ozawa Shuzo (according to the Ome Tourism Association): https://www.omekanko.gr.jp/spot/80401/
  • Gyokudo Art Museum: about 3 minutes’ walk from Mitake Station. The exhibition changes seven times a year. Check opening days and admission on the official page: https://www.sawanoi-sake.com/service/gyokudo/
  • Shoes: the final approach to the shrine includes about 330 steps; leave the heels and sandals at home.
  • To combine: stop off at Ome Station to walk its Showa-retro streets and the Ome Railway Park (see this series’ Ome retro article). Back in Tachikawa, walk the Negawa stream and the Tama River banks, where the same water arrives, and the green path along the Tamagawa Aqueduct, and you will have joined the upper and lower reaches of the river.

On the way home: Tachikawa Station North Exit

Legs that have climbed the 330 steps of Mount Mitake and scrambled over the rocks of the valley start to complain honestly the moment you sit down on the train home. A day in the mountains uses different muscles from a walk on the flat.

When you get back to Tachikawa Station, On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店) is a one-minute walk from the North Exit, on the 3rd floor of the Etoile Building, 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo. It is a hot yoga studio where classes are held on heated lava stone, and alongside room-temperature yoga and Pilates there is women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training. There are more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons alone.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30, so even after a full day on the mountain and an evening train back to Tachikawa, you can still make it.

A trial yoga lesson for first-timers costs ¥1,980 (tax included), including rental of two bath towels, one face towel and a mat. Apart from your hiking gear, all you need to bring is a change of clothes. 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

You climb the steps at the North Exit of the station where the mountain shrine begins its directions. The entrance to the mountain is also the exit from your day.

Cover photo: Autumn in Mitake Valley: the blue Tama River flows down between trees in autumn colour. (Photo: Guilhem Vellut from Annecy, France / CC BY 2.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

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