Tachikawa Night Views and Mount Fuji at Dawn: A Walking Guide

Seen from Tachikawa, Mount Fuji sits almost where the winter-solstice sun sets. A guide to night views, Fuji at dawn, and the timetable of the city’s sky.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Does Tachikawa (立川) have a night view? Ask most residents and they will tilt their heads. There is no skyscraper with an observation deck. No harbour, no Bay Bridge. I thought the same. Night-time Tachikawa, I assumed, was a bright station front and the dark land of a former air base.

But when I started looking into the timetable of the sky, I changed my mind. Seen from Tachikawa, Mount Fuji stands almost exactly where the sun sets around the winter solstice. So every winter, on the platform of the station next to Tachikawa, the setting sun drops onto the summit of Fuji. And it happens not on the solstice itself, but once before it and once after. Digging further, I found that the earliest sunset of the year is not on the solstice either but in early December, and that the sunniest month around here is not midsummer but January.

Why does the setting sun land on Fuji’s summit as if avoiding the solstice? Carrying that mystery, I set out to walk Tachikawa in order of the clock, from night to morning.

Tachikawa’s night view: from the station deck and the monorail line

To see Tachikawa at night, start by going up onto the deck at the North Exit of the station. Step out of the ticket gates and you are already one level above the ground.

According to the City of Tachikawa’s timeline, sections of pedestrian-only deck opened at the North and South Exit plazas in 2001, and the South and North Exit decks were joined in 2005. A clock tower and monument were placed in front of the North Exit in 1987, and the deck’s arches were repainted in 2013. At night, under those arches, people heading home pass people heading out.

From the deck, the station front at night is in two layers. On the ground below, lines of buses and car headlights flow past; at eye level, the windows of the department stores and station buildings glow in rows. And above that, the lights of the monorail slide slowly across. Walk from the North Exit deck toward Isetan and the platform of Tachikawa-Kita Station appears overhead. The Tama Monorail’s track runs on high girders above the road, and at night its carriages look like lit boxes gliding through the air.

You can also simply ride the monorail. Heading south from Tachikawa-Kita Station, you pass Tachikawa-Minami and Shibasaki-Taiikukan stations and cross the Tama River high above the Tachihi Bridge, opened in 1989. At night the Tama River becomes a black band, and beyond it the lights of Hino run on in dots. A night view while crossing a river from up high is something you do not find often, even in Tama — the western half of Tokyo, beyond the 23 central wards.

In the Showa era, the night at the station was lit by different kinds of light. According to Kono Machi Archives, in the 1960s there were ten cinemas around Tachikawa Station. In 1970 Isetan moved to a new store and Tachikawa Takashimaya opened. In 1982 the station building was rebuilt above the tracks, and the station building “WILL” opened at the North Exit. It was renamed Lumine Tachikawa in 1992. What lit the station front at night in those days were ten cinemas and department stores rising from the ground. Now that light has climbed to the height of the second-floor deck, and above it pass the lights of the monorail, which began running on 27 November 1998. Over half a century, the night light at the station has climbed step by step from the ground into the air.

The famous lights grow with the seasons, too. In winter, on Sun Sun Road at the North Exit, about 10,000 bulbs light each of 48 zelkova trees — about 600,000 in all — for the Tachikawa Illumination. In 2025 it ran from 1 November to 18 January the following year, lit from 5 p.m. to midnight. In autumn, Showa Kinen Park has lit up its yellow autumn leaves since 2019. Both are covered in this series’ stories on festivals and on the park, so here I will just mention their names.

GREEN SPRINGS, at the end of Sun Sun Road, is a plaza open 24 hours a day, according to a 2025 document from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism. There is an artwork that lights up at sunset and changes how it glows according to the day’s weather. It is too modest to call a night view, but a plaza by a station where you can sit at midnight listening to the sound of water is not common.

In sheer dazzle, the deck’s night view cannot match central Tokyo. But a station front where light piles up in three tiers — ground, second floor and air — is a view only Tachikawa has. And this station-front night has one more feature you cannot see.

A night with 24,000 fewer people than the day

There are fewer people in Tachikawa at night than by day. That sounds obvious, but the difference is large.

According to figures from the 2020 census compiled by Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Tachikawa’s daytime population is 207,832, and its resident population 183,581. There are more than 24,000 more people by day, a daytime/night-time ratio of 113.2 — the highest of the 26 cities in Tama. The people who gather from outside the city during the day head for the ticket gates in the evening and go home to their own towns.

The station figures back this up. According to JR East’s figures for passengers boarding at each station in fiscal 2024, an average of 154,091 people a day board at Tachikawa Station: 80,286 with commuter passes and 73,805 without. It is the 14th busiest station in the whole JR East network. In a city of just over 180,000 residents, 150,000 people board trains here every day. Many of those who got off in the morning get back on in the evening to go home. The flow of people at night in Tachikawa is like the biggest tide in Tama, ebbing and flowing.

The evening crowd on the deck is, in part, those 24,000 on their way home. Stand on the North Exit deck and watch the stream of people being drawn into the ticket gates, and the city begins to look as if it is letting out a long breath at the end of the day. A night view, I think, is not only the lights of buildings but also the scene of the hour when people leave.

The night sky in the Showa era was entirely different. According to Kono Machi Archives, when the Korean War began in 1950, the Tachikawa base became the US military’s largest transport base in the Far East, and aircraft noise became a problem. The US military announced the end of flights at Tachikawa in 1969. Older people may remember the sound of big transport planes crossing low through the sky north of the station.

Tachikawa Airfield is still in use today, as a Japan Ground Self-Defense Force airfield. According to information the City of Tachikawa publishes from the base, flights normally take place on weekdays from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. On Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, as a rule, there are no training flights. Back then, the trouble with Tachikawa’s sky was the noise of transport planes. Now, after 8 p.m., what moves through Tachikawa’s sky is the quiet light of the monorail. Young people may find it hard to believe, but the sky north of the station was once the sky over the largest transport base in the Far East.

Tachikawa’s nights have been quiet for only about half a century. And in that quiet sky, when winter comes, another spectacle appears.

The earliest sunset is not on the winter solstice

If we are talking about night views, I want to know when the night begins. The Ephemeris Computation Office of the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan publishes Tokyo’s sunrise and sunset times for every day. Tachikawa is a little west of Tokyo’s reference point, so its times are slightly later, but the seasonal pattern is almost the same.

Looking through that table, I noticed something odd. In Tokyo in 2026, the earliest sunset is at 16:28, from 1 to 13 December. On the winter solstice, 22 December, the sun sets at 16:32. The solstice is four minutes later.

The sunrise is out of step, too. On 22 December the sun rises at 6:47. But from 1 to 13 January it rises at 6:51, which is later. In other words, the solstice — the day with the shortest daylight — is neither the day of the earliest sunset nor the day of the latest sunrise. Evenings get dark earliest in early December, and mornings get light latest in early January. The solstice sits in the middle, giving a little ground to each.

This, it seems, is a well-known effect of the Earth’s orbit and the tilt of its axis. But knowing it as a fact is one thing; checking it against your own city’s timetable is a different size of surprise. Step out onto the North Exit deck on your way home from work on an early-December evening, and it is already completely dark. That is the earliest night of the year. Without waiting for the solstice, the night has already hit bottom. On New Year’s Day the sun sets at 16:38, a full ten minutes later than in early December. By the time the year turns, the evenings have already begun to lengthen little by little. If New Year evenings feel strangely long, it is probably not only because of all the food.

And summer? In Tokyo in 2026, the earliest sunrise is at 4:25, from 6 to 21 June. The latest sunset is at 19:01, from 24 to 30 June. On the summer solstice, 21 June, the sun rises at 4:25 and sets at 19:00. Compared with the winter solstice, sunrise is 2 hours 22 minutes earlier and sunset 2 hours 28 minutes later. Stand on the same deck at the same time, and the sky you see in summer and winter are completely different things.

The observatory’s table also gives the direction of sunrise and sunset. At the summer solstice, the sun rises at an azimuth of 60 degrees and sets at 300 degrees. At the winter solstice, it rises at 118.6 degrees and sets at 241.4 degrees (measured clockwise from north). The summer sun rises toward the north and sets toward the north; the winter sun rises toward the south and sets toward the south. That number, 241.4 degrees, is the key to our opening mystery.

The days in the middle of spring and autumn hold small discoveries, too. On the spring equinox in 2026, 20 March, the sun in Tokyo rises at 5:45 at 89.8 degrees and sets at 17:52 at 270.5 degrees. It rises almost due east and sets almost due west. Yet count the length of the day and you get 12 hours 7 minutes. On the autumn equinox, 23 September, sunrise is at 5:29 and sunset at 17:37: 12 hours 8 minutes. On the day when day and night should be equal, the day is about seven minutes longer. The usual explanation is that sunrise and sunset are timed from when the sun’s upper edge, not its centre, touches the horizon, and that the atmosphere bends light. The calendar’s “equal day and night” is, on the observatory’s timetable, slightly biased in favour of day.

At the equinoxes, stand on a road running west from Tachikawa Station in the evening and the sun sets almost due west — well north of Fuji’s direction at 239 degrees. From there toward the winter solstice, the setting sun edges a little further south each day: toward Fuji. Autumn sunsets are part of the sun’s journey toward Fuji.

Tachikawa’s night and morning in numbers

• 16:28 — Tokyo’s earliest sunset. Not on the solstice, but from 1 to 13 December. On the solstice the sun sets four minutes later.
• 4:25 — Sunrise around the summer solstice. You will wait more than four hours for the free area of Showa Kinen Park to open at 8:30.
• 239 — Degrees: the direction of Mount Fuji from Tachikawa Station, as I calculated it from coordinates. The winter-solstice sunset is at 241.4 degrees.
• 72.6 — Kilometres: the calculated straight-line distance from Tachikawa Station to the summit of Fuji. By the same calculation, Shinjuku Station is about 95 km away. Tachikawa is about 23 km closer to Fuji than central Tokyo.
• 201.3 — Hours: Fuchu’s normal sunshine for January, the longest of the year — more than 50 hours more than midsummer July.
• 1.3 — Days: the normal number of days a year on which fog is observed at the central Tokyo station. Most morning mist is probably not fog.

So what lies in that direction, at 241.4 degrees?