Tachikawa Place Names: A History Walk Through Its Town-Name Origins

The origins of Tachikawa’s place names: five theories for the city’s name, seven wartime names of 1942, a reported swap, and Sunagawa names picked by survey.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

Akebono-cho, the busy district outside the North Exit of Tachikawa Station, was by rights supposed to be called Hagoromo-cho. So the story goes.

Step out of the North Exit of Tachikawa (立川) Station, in western Tokyo, and you are in Akebono-cho. Step out of the South Exit and you are in Shibasaki-cho. Walk southeast from the station and you reach Nishiki-cho and Hagoromo-cho; head north and you reach Takamatsu-cho and Midori-cho; to the west lies Fujimi-cho. (Cho simply means “town” or “district” in an address.)

Akebono, “daybreak.” Hagoromo, the feathered robe of a celestial maiden. Nishiki, “brocade.” Takamatsu, “tall pine.” Midori, “green.” Fujimi, “view of Mount Fuji.” Line them up and they sound like words from a classical poetry anthology, or the names of kimono patterns. They have a different texture from Shibasaki or Sunagawa, also in Tachikawa, which carry on the names of Edo-period villages. And no wonder: these six are not village names from the Edo period (1603–1868). They were given all at once, in 1942 (Showa 17), in the middle of the war.

This is where the opening story comes in. Akebono-cho and Hagoromo-cho, it is said, swapped names in the city assembly when the names were already all but decided. “Daybreak,” and the celestial maiden’s “feather robe.” Who swapped them, and why? With that mystery in my pocket, I set off to walk across the map of Tachikawa. I’m not good at reading maps. But with town names, even when you’re lost, the signs tell you where you are.

Before walking Tachikawa’s place names: the mystery of “Tachikawa” itself

Let me start with the biggest name of all: Tachikawa itself.

The “Overview of Tachikawa City” on the city’s official website has a section on the origin of the city’s name. A book called Tachikawa no Chimei (The Place Names of Tachikawa), published by the city’s board of education, introduces several theories, it says. The tatekawa theory: the Tama River, which flows east–west in front of the old provincial capital (kokufu), was called the river of the hi no tate — roughly, “the warp of the sun.” The tachikawa “mansion river” theory: there was a tachi, a lord’s residence, at Fusai-ji Temple. The tagichikawa theory, from the Tama River’s rapid currents. The “east river” theory, which holds that the river of the tate was a river lying to the east. And the “Tachikawa clan” theory: the Tachikawa family lived here. And the city’s page concludes: none of the theories is conclusive, and the truth is not known.

A city writing, about the origin of its own name, “the truth is not known.” That’s honesty. I became rather fond of that sentence.

Unknown as it is, the name’s age is clear. The second issue of Tachikawa Monogatari (“Tachikawa Stories”), the newsletter of the city’s history-compilation office, says the place name “Tachikawa” (written 立河 in old documents) is thought to go back as far as the Kamakura period (1185–1333). In the Warring States period (late 15th to late 16th century) the area was called “Shibasaki village in Tachikawa township” (立河郷芝崎村). And the same issue states that the municipal name “Tachikawa” is inherited from a place name that existed several hundred years ago.

The city carries a place name that reaches back to the Kamakura period. A new-looking town where the monorail runs through the sky and people pass each other on two levels across the station-front deck has a name that is, in fact, centuries older than the town itself.

But that raises the next question. If such an old name existed, why was the Edo-period village called not “Tachikawa village” but “Shibasaki village”?

Why did Shibasaki village become Tachikawa village?

In the Edo period, the village spreading over what is now the south side of Tachikawa Station was called Shibasaki. According to the city’s chronology, in 1881 (Meiji 14), Shibasaki village was renamed Tachikawa village.

Why rename it? The reason is surprisingly bureaucratic. Issue 16 of Tachikawa Monogatari says of Tachikawa village that it was renamed from Shibasaki to avoid confusion with another Shibasaki village in the same Kita-Tama district — a village in what is now the city of Chofu. When Kita-Tama district was created in 1878 (Meiji 11), there turned out to be two Shibasaki villages side by side in the same district.

For the clerks handling paperwork at the district office, it must have been unbearable. Every time, they had to check which Shibasaki village a filing came from. So one of them changed its name. And the new name chosen was “Tachikawa,” handed down since the Kamakura period.

A local information website runs a series looking into the origins of Tachikawa’s town names one by one. Its first instalment imagines that if there had been no Shibasaki village in Chofu, Tachikawa might have stayed Shibasaki village, become Shibasaki town, and then Shibasaki city. It goes further: if that city had then merged with Sunagawa town, it might have become “Shibasuna City.” Shibasuna. Say it three times fast and it sounds like a tongue-twister drill. Perhaps Tachikawa owes Chofu’s Shibasaki village a small thank-you.

So did the name “Shibasaki” disappear? No.

The second issue of Tachikawa Monogatari says the town name “Shibasaki-cho,” south of Tachikawa Station, shows that this was the center of Shibasaki village. When town names were given more than half a century after the renaming, the village’s name returned as the name of the district at the old village’s heart.

What does “Shibasaki” mean? The local series, citing Tachikawa no Chimei, introduces one view: shiba means small brushwood growing in the hills and fields, saki means the tip or edge of something, so “Shibasaki” may mean something like “the edge of the hill where brushwood grows.” To the south of Tachikawa, the terrace cliffs that the Tama River created run east to west. The tip of a terrace thick with brushwood. Stand on top of the cliff in Shibasaki-cho with that in mind, and the name and the landform seem to lock together. They seem to; there’s no proof. The pleasure of place names mostly lives inside that “seem to.”

The 130 place names of Edo-era Shibasaki village

Inside Shibasaki village, there were many smaller names.

According to “Looking at the Place Names of Shibasaki Village,” a feature in the second issue of Tachikawa Monogatari, Yoshiharu Hosaka’s Tachikawa no Chimei: Tachikawa-hen (Tachikawa City Board of Education, 1988) found that Edo-period Shibasaki village had more than 30 place names for its settlements and more than 100 for its fields and other land. More than 130 names, crammed into a single village.

The feature includes a map on which those names are written onto the 1804 (Kyowa 4) “Map of Shibasaki Village.” Looking at it, you find many names you want to read aloud. Hebi-kaito (“snake plot”). Ganigara. Kamasu-kaito (“straw-sack plot”). Kanida (“crab paddy”). Karihoshiba (a place for drying cut crops). Shoshinzuka. Fujizuka (“Fuji mound”). Taki-no-ue, Takitsubo, Taki-no-shita — “above the falls,” “the plunge pool,” “below the falls.” Akamatsubara (“red-pine field”).

Snakes, crabs and straw sacks, all in the same village. Each paddy and field, each bend in the road, had a name like these. In an age without maps or GPS, people told land apart by name and gave errands by name. “Go to the field at Hebi-kaito, would you” — and everyone in the village would have known where that was.

The same feature says that most of the mounds and old roads that served as landmarks for these names almost entirely vanished with the opening of Tachikawa Airfield in 1922 (Taisho 11) and urbanization, making it hard to match the old names precisely to today’s lot numbers. So besides old documents, elderly residents were interviewed, and the distribution of names was redrawn using old temples, shrines and historic spots as clues — Fusai-ji Temple, Jorakuin Temple, Suwa Shrine, and the Fuji mound in 1-chome of Fujimi-cho.

The names “above the falls,” “plunge pool” and “below the falls” sit together because spring water flowed from the terrace cliff. The same issue of Tachikawa Monogatari introduces Takitsubo and Taki-no-shita as names connected to springs. A Fujizuka is a mound of earth piled up for worshipping Mount Fuji. Remember these two words. Hidden in them is a key to the mystery of the new town names that came later.

Almost none of the 130 names survives in today’s addresses. So when, and how, were the present names born in their place? The scene moves to wartime Showa.

1942: seven town names are born

In the city chronology, under 1942 (Showa 17), there is a short line: The town and district names Fujimi, Shibasaki, Nishiki, Hagoromo, Akebono, Takamatsu and Midori are established.

The area these seven towns cover is no accident. According to the second issue of Tachikawa Monogatari, Tachikawa village covered what are now Shibasaki-cho, Fujimi-cho, Nishiki-cho, Akebono-cho, Hagoromo-cho, Takamatsu-cho and Midori-cho, and until 1881 this area was called Shibasaki village. In other words, the single Edo village of Shibasaki was carved into seven towns in 1942.

Behind this lay rapid growth. According to issue 16 of Tachikawa Monogatari, Tachikawa village’s population, 1,920 in 1889, rose to 5,303 in 1922 when the airfield opened and to 6,895 the next year; it became a town in 1923 and a city in December 1940. At the end of the year it became a city, the population was 34,693. People had gathered around the airfield, the military facilities and the factories, and the old koaza (small hamlet names) and lot numbers could no longer describe the town. The city chronology also records a revision of lot numbers in 1944.

At the time, Tachikawa was called the kuto — the “sky capital.” Issue 16 of Tachikawa Monogatari writes that with the opening of the airfield, Tachikawa village began to develop as a sky capital and a military town. Of the seven names, Shibasaki inherited the village’s name, and Fujimi turned an old view straight into a name. As the local series, citing Tachikawa no Chimei, puts it, the Fujimi-cho area borders Akishima City to the west, and from the edge of the terrace you get a beautiful view of Mount Fuji to the west — a district perfectly suited to the name Fujimi. Shibasaki village’s place names included a Fuji mound too. So the memory of a land from which you look at Fuji was handed on from Edo to Showa, from mound to town name.

The remaining five — Akebono, Hagoromo, Nishiki, Takamatsu and Midori — are neither old village names nor old hamlet names. They were invented from scratch. And two of them, it is said, were switched just as they were about to be decided.

Why did Akebono-cho and Hagoromo-cho swap names?

The local series, citing Tachikawa no Chimei, gives the following account. At first, the name “Akebono-cho” was chosen for what is now Hagoromo-cho. But at a plenary consultative meeting of the city assembly on 12 June 1941 (Showa 16), an item titled “On the Establishment of Town Names” was tabled, and Hagoromo-cho and Akebono-cho were swapped.

Why swap them? The series passes on two stories.

One is that the military objected. Originally, the area of today’s Akebono-cho, right next to the airfield, was to be Hagoromo-cho. But voices in the military are said to have complained that “a hagoromo falls” — an ill omen. In an aviation town, naming a district after the robe of a maiden who flies through the sky: so far, so good. But in the legend of the hagoromo, the celestial maiden loses her feather robe and is left stranded on earth. If the robe falls, the maiden falls. Not something you want next door to the airplanes. The series stresses, though, that the truth of the military story is apparently unclear.

According to the series, the name Hagoromo itself does not come from any legend handed down in Hagoromo-cho. In 1942, when the names were established, Tachikawa was called the sky capital, and it is said that Hagoromo was chosen by association with flying. A name chosen by association with the sky, withdrawn by association with the sky. Omens, it turns out, are very flexible things.

The other story is gentler. Citing Tachikawa no Chimei, the series notes that the area around today’s 3-chome of Akebono-cho was once called Asahi-cho (“morning-sun town”), and introduces the view that “asahi” was rephrased as “akebono” after the famous opening of The Pillow Book: “In spring, the dawn (akebono).” Having Sei Shonagon, the Heian-era court writer, reword “morning sun” for you — if that’s what happened, it was a rather stylish piece of work.

The author of the series also writes that, normally, “Akebono” would go to Hagoromo-cho, which lies to the east. Dawn comes from the east. The first plan matched the logic of the map. It was overturned, and now “daybreak” is the name of the busy district spreading north from the station’s North Exit, in the middle of the city.

Which story is true, I could not confirm from the sources at hand. But one thing is certain. All seven names given in 1942 are still alive on the map more than eighty years later. Hagoromo-cho is still Hagoromo, and hasn’t fallen; and every morning in Akebono-cho, the station’s North Exit pours out its people.

The traveller’s detour quiz

In 1970, when a new town was created centered on the old Minami-Sunagawa area, which name came first in the survey held to choose the town’s name?

• A. Aoba-cho (“green leaves”)
• B. Sakae-cho (“prosperity”)
• C. Misono-cho (“beautiful garden”)

The answer comes near the end of this article.

Brocade banners, red pines and green grass

The remaining three — Nishiki, Takamatsu and Midori — each have a story too.

For Nishiki-cho, the local series passes on the origin that Tachikawa no Chimei introduces from a local record called Nishiki Rokkai no Ayumi (The History of the Nishiki Six Association). In 1912 (Taisho 1), grand special army maneuvers reviewed by Emperor Taisho were held across this area and the Tama riverbed, and a procession led by the nishiki no mihata — the imperial brocade banner — advanced through what is now 5- and 6-chome, from the emperor’s temporary seat at Tokyo Prefectural Second Middle School (today’s Tachikawa High School) to the viewing stand on the cliff above the Tama River. The town is said to have been named Nishiki-cho after the brocade banner people saw then. A procession thirty years before the town got its name, it is said, survived as the name.

Nishiki-cho has one more face, a numerical one. According to the city’s overview, the lowest point in the city is around 6-chome of Nishiki-cho, at 64.9 metres above sea level. The town near the Tama River, through which the brocade banner is said to have passed, is also the lowest town in the city.

What about Takamatsu-cho? Citing Tachikawa no Chimei, the series first says the origin of the name is not certain, then explains that until the early Showa years there were woods between Takamatsu-cho and Akebono-cho, with quite a few large red pines. As Tachikawa developed, the woods became housing, and the great red pines disappeared. The image of those lost pine woods, the suggestion goes, was probably in the minds of the people who chose the name.

In the early Showa years, then, there were still woods around today’s Akebono-cho, with large red pines standing in them. A short walk from the North Exit and you could have entered a wood that smelled of pine bark and undergrowth. Walk through the same Akebono-cho today and what you see are department stores, the deck and office windows. If you’re looking for pines, it’s quicker to look up at the town-name signs.

Remember, here, the list of Shibasaki village’s place names. Edo-era Shibasaki village had a place called Akamatsubara, “red-pine field.” Whether that was where Takamatsu-cho is, I could not confirm. But it seems the memory of a field of red pines lived both in an Edo hamlet name and in the minds of Showa-era people. The pines survived only in names.

The story of Midori-cho is the most entertaining. The local series quotes a passage from Tachikawa no Chomei (The Town Names of Tachikawa). When the names were given, Midori-cho was an area lined with army facilities centered on the Army’s 5th Air Regiment. After the war, with housing developments and the building of danchi (large public housing estates), abstract colour names like “Midori-cho” and “Midorigaoka” appeared everywhere — but before the war it was surely a rare case. And it concludes that the idea of “green” was probably born from the scene of Tachikawa Airfield in early spring, when the grass sprouted and everything turned lush and green.

Someone looked at the grass of a military airfield and named a town “green.” Plain turf beside a runway. To entrust a town’s name to the colour of that turf was, for wartime, a remarkably unhurried sensibility.

The site of that airfield is now Showa Kinen Park (the Showa Memorial Park), and in spring its vast lawn turns lush and green from end to end. To a name someone took from the colour of grass eighty years ago, the land itself caught up later. Midori-cho is a town whose name became a prophecy.

Tachikawa town names by the numbers

• 130-plus — Place names in Edo-era Shibasaki village: 30-plus for settlements, 100-plus for fields and other land. Lucky there were no postmen.
• 7 — Town names born all at once in 1942. One village, split into seven names.
• 9 — Town names created between 1970 and 1983 in the former Sunagawa town, which merged with Tachikawa. A naming that took thirteen years.
• 16 — Towns in Tachikawa City today. If you can name them all, you are probably an advanced-level Tachikawa resident.
• 124.7 m and 64.9 m — Elevations of the city’s highest point (around 4-chome, Nishisunacho) and lowest point (around 6-chome, Nishiki-cho). A difference of about 60 metres. I thought Tachikawa was flat, but measured, it hides a slope as tall as a high-rise.

So far, this has been the story of the area around Tachikawa Station — the old Shibasaki village. But spread out today’s map of Tachikawa and, to the north, there is a much larger stretch of land. That was once another village altogether.