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」

Tachikawa History Museum Guide: Local History and Folklore, Free

Fishing gear from the Tama River: cormorant fishing by day, and sweetfish restaurants

The museum’s “Tama River fishing implements” (多摩川漁撈具) were designated a tangible folk cultural property by the city in 1982. They are fishing tools used on the Tama River near Tachikawa, collected over many years by Mita Tsurukichi, who was chairman of the city’s council for the protection of cultural properties. What one resident collected became a cultural property of the city.

The Tama River and Hino Bridge between Tachikawa and Hino, with apartment blocks on the far bank (2019).
The Tama River and Hino Bridge between Tachikawa and Hino, with apartment blocks on the far bank (2019).
Photo: MosaMint / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

According to the museum’s visitor guide “Fishing Methods and Gear of the Tama River,” more than 100 fishing methods are said to have been used on the Tama River — with rods, nets, do basket traps, cormorants and more. Every one of them cleverly made use of the river’s conditions and the habits of the fish.

The traditional methods the guide lists are a pleasure just to name. Tomo-zuri, “friend fishing,” in which a live decoy ayu (sweetfish) is sent out into the current and the territorial ayu that rams it to defend its patch is caught on a hook. Hane-ami, in which a beater startles the ayu and a catcher behind nets them as they leap. Sebari, in which okazari made from rice straw are strung across the full width of the river, steering the startled ayu into a moji trap at the end of a partition net. Yose-ami, in which the whiteness of a white net and the sound of weights frighten fish into a trap for small fry. None of them catches fish by force; they read the fish’s mind and move it.

The tools each have their own logic. The trap for small fish has a wide mouth but barbs turned inward, so a fish that gets in cannot get out. Friend fishing uses a carrying tube for the decoy ayu on its line, and a box to keep decoys lively, which is left soaking in the current. The hako-megane, a wooden box with glass set in the front, was used to peer into the water to find fish and check the riverbed.

And then the cormorants. Cormorant fishing (ukai) is the ancient technique in which trained cormorants catch fish for their handlers; most visitors to Japan know it, if at all, as a night-time spectacle on the Nagara River in Gifu. According to the guide, cormorant fishing was already practised on the Tama River in the Edo period. It used a method called kachi-u, in which people walked through the river by day — unlike the method used on the Nagara River and elsewhere, done at night from boats by the light of bonfires. I had always pictured cormorant fishing as night, boats and fire, so at this point I had to redraw the picture in my head. The cormorant masters of the Tama River worked their birds in daylight, walking through the river.

In the Edo period, the city writes, ayu from the Tama River were presented to Edo Castle as “tribute ayu.” When the Kobu Railway opened in the Meiji era, more people came out from Tokyo to enjoy the Tama River, and the riverbanks bustled as a pleasure resort. According to the guide, in the Meiji era there were three ayu restaurants near Tachikawa, and guests enjoyed ayu dishes in huts on the riverbed or aboard roofed pleasure boats. Cormorant fishing was even performed in front of the restaurants’ boats as a kind of show.

Watching cormorants fish in daylight from a pleasure boat, then eating the freshly caught ayu. That was one way to have fun in Meiji-era Tachikawa. The city’s commentary even calls out to the reader: try to imagine the scene of pleasure boats coming and going on the Tama River, and cormorant fishing unfolding. Seeing “try to imagine” in a municipal cultural-property description, I think the person who wrote it must have wanted to see that scene too.

Later, urbanisation polluted the Tama River and there were times when its water ran low, the city’s commentary goes on, but many residents worked together to “make the Tama River clean,” and today it has become a clear stream again. Pleasure boats and cormorants in the Meiji era, a dirty river in the Showa era, water returned in the Reiwa era. Three eras of scenery overlap on the same riverbank. Among the museum’s publications is also a volume called Gravel Extraction on the Tama River and Its People. The river gave people not only fish but the gravel that built the city. The list of fishing tools is a museum publication too: Fishing Implements of the Middle Tama River, 333 pages, 1,240 grams. A book of river tools is as heavy as a river stone.

Tachikawa City History and Folklore Museum in numbers

  • 330,000 — Visitors in the museum’s first 40 years. Admission is free, so total ticket revenue: 0 yen.
  • 3 — Immovable “real property” National Treasures in Tokyo. One of them is Tachikawa’s stone pillar. What is here is its replica.
  • 1846 — The year a black ship was drawn in the headman’s diary. Seven years before Perry.
  • 100 — Plus: the number of fishing methods said to have been used on the Tama River. It must have been hard on the fish, too.
  • 55 — Silkworm eggs the museum was given in 2024. Fifty-three of them spun cocoons.
  • 2,180 — Grams: the heaviest excavation report among the museum’s publications for sale. If you are buying one, have it posted.

A wayfarer’s quiz

According to the museum’s visitor guide, how was cormorant fishing on the Tama River different from the method used on the Nagara River and elsewhere? (A) People walked through the river by day. (B) It was done from boats at night by bonfire light. (C) It used herons instead of cormorants. The answer is at the end.

After the river tools, pictures of the river and the station. They preserve the Tachikawa of a time when photographs were still rare.

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

Baba Kichizo’s “Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village,” and the thousand cherry trees at the station

“Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village” (立川村十二景) is a work by the local painter Baba Kichizo, who sketched Tachikawa Village around 1897–1912 and coloured the sketches in the early Showa era. According to the city, many of them depict the area around Tachikawa Station and the Tama River, and as valuable records capturing the customs of a time when photography was not yet widespread, they were designated a tangible cultural property of the city in 1976.

One of them is “A Thousand Cherry Trees in Front of Tachikawa Station.” According to the city’s commentary, it depicts Tachikawa Station and its cherry trees around 1902, and those cherries were called tamazakura and loved by station staff and residents alike. Where today’s North Exit is surrounded by station buildings, decks and department stores, there was once a station lined with cherry trees. The only clue to what it looked like is one painter’s brush.

The story of the Twelve Views is still going. In fiscal 2024, more paintings by Baba Kichizo were donated to the museum. In 2025 the museum showed the originals in its “New Acquisitions” exhibition, and at the same time held an outreach exhibition of the Twelve Views on panels on the ground floor of City Hall. Sketches more than a hundred years old are still arriving at the museum from people’s homes. The City Hall exhibition was open from 8:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. Look at the Meiji-era cherries in front of Tachikawa Station on your way home from work at night — the city had laid on that kind of detour.

In 2003, the city’s council for promoting greenery chose the city’s best green spots as “Twelve Green Views of Tachikawa City.” Those who chose them wrote that they would be glad if the list became a modern green heritage following on from the city-designated “Twelve Views of Tachikawa Village.” The Meiji painter’s twelve views became the model for choosing the city’s sights a century later.

The museum’s year resembles a village calendar

The museum newsletter includes a list of temporary exhibitions over the past ten years. Looking through it, you notice that the museum’s year has a fixed shape.

In spring it displays dolls for the Boys’ Festival (Tango no Sekku). In early summer comes “New Acquisitions,” showing materials donated the previous year. The summer holidays bring “Archaeological Sites of Tachikawa,” showing the results of digs in the city, recently with a chance to try making fire the Jomon-period way. Autumn brings a themed exhibition that changes every year. Just picking from the past decade — “Tachikawa, Capital of the Skies,” “Tales of the Tachikawa Station,” “The 1964 Tokyo Olympics,” “The Tama River and Tachikawa,” “The Shape of the City,” “Where the Ome Line Begins: Tachikawa Station” — the titles alone tell you the character of Tachikawa. Winter brings exhibitions of “Life and Tools” and old implements. And in early spring the year closes with the Doll Festival (Momo no Sekku), displaying Meiji-, Taisho- and Showa-era hina dolls donated by residents.

It begins with festival dolls and ends with festival dolls. In between, new materials are laid out like a harvest, the ground is dug in summer, and tools are polished in winter. The museum’s year somehow resembles the year of a village long ago.

The hands-on activities are like village events, too. According to the city, the museum has worked with volunteer groups to hold udon making, rice-cake pounding, mayudama decorations (cocoon-shaped New Year ornaments), moon-viewing decorations and weaving. There is also a session for dyeing handkerchiefs with onion skins. The “Tonkararin Weaving Festival,” held with the weaving volunteer circle Tonkararin, reached its 26th edition in the summer of 2026. A group named after the very sound of the loom has kept going for a quarter of a century.

In fiscal 2024, the museum raised silkworms for the first time. According to the newsletter, on 16 May 2024 it was given 55 silkworm eggs by the Silk Museum in Yokohama. The variety was “Shunrei × Shogetsu.” Silkworms begin spinning cocoons about a month after hatching. Once in their fifth instar they eat mulberry leaves without pause, and the staff were kept busy picking leaves and feeding them morning and evening. Two died, but 53 spun splendid cocoons. The reason for the project, the newsletter says, was that the sericulture records in the museum’s collection were hard to understand without the staff experiencing it themselves. Visitors who came to see said things like “It brings back memories” and “I was moved to see this for the first time.”

The people who look after the records raised silkworms with their own hands to understand what the records meant. The era when the village of Sunagawa lived by mulberry and silkworms is covered in this series’ story on silk farming. The museum is now tracing the busyness of that era inside a small box. In early summer 2025 and 2026, there was also an exhibition showing live silkworms, “What Kind of Creature Is the Silkworm?”

The museum goes out, too. According to the city, staff visit schools in the city and give lessons using items from the collection. “Old Tools Experience,” in which pupils actually try old carrying tools and footwear, is for elementary school children and takes about 40 minutes. One year, trainees aiming to become museum curators held a photo exhibition tracking changes to the streets around Tachikawa Station from fixed points. A mini-corner introducing changes in clothing in another photo exhibition was titled “Tachikawa ✿ FASHION SNAP.” As names for a town museum’s exhibits go, that is quite daring.

Kawagoe-michi Old Folk House Park: closed until March 2027

Another place the museum looks after is the Kawagoe-michi Ryokuchi Old Folk House Park (川越道緑地古民家園) in Saiwaicho, in the north of the city. It opened on 17 October 1993.

The park has two buildings moved there, both tangible cultural properties of the city: the Kobayashi Family House and the Suzaki Family Storehouse. The Kobayashi house is a thatched farmhouse from the end of the Edo period; during its dismantling survey a timber was found inscribed “Kaei 5 (1852),” which revealed when it was built. The Suzaki storehouse is a three-storey wooden dozo (earthen-walled storehouse), a type with few surviving examples. What to look for in both buildings is covered in this series’ stories on cultural facilities and the old villages. A blog by someone who loves walking around Tachikawa introduces it as an old folk house with a beautifully kept stone garden, and recommends combining it with a walk along the Tamagawa Aqueduct, since a visit does not take long.

The park has held seasonal events. According to the city: a Boys’ Festival display in April, wheat harvesting in late May, wheat threshing in late June, Tanabata decorations in early July, sweet-potato digging in October, and a Doll Festival display in February. There was also a gathering to enjoy matcha in the hearth room of the Kobayashi house.

For now, though, you cannot go in. According to the city, the park is closed from 1 June 2026 to 31 March 2027 for medium-scale renovation work on its management facilities and other parts, and the folk houses cannot be visited while it is closed. If you want to see the thatched roof, wait until the spring after the work is finished. In the meantime, the museum in Fujimicho is open.

The real things are in the city; the museum is the city’s index

Now let us return to the question we began with. Why did 330,000 people come in 40 years to a museum without its real National Treasure?

Having followed the records, I think I understand a little. This museum is not a place that gathers the real things and locks them away. The stone pillar is at Fusai-ji, the gong with its owner, the Buddhist statues at Suwa Shrine — each in its own place. The museum points to where they are, with replicas and explanations. When you finish the exhibition room, it is as if you have been handed a map, and you can go out and find the real things in the city. The museum is the index to the city of Tachikawa.

And much of what remains here as the real thing was brought in by residents. Fishing tools collected over many years by the chairman of a council. Hina dolls donated by households. A painter’s originals that had been sleeping in someone’s home. The memories of people who told the staff what silk farming was like. The newsletter says that information from people who had raised silkworms was hugely appreciated. Tachikawa’s history did not come out of some grand storehouse; it gathered little by little from residents’ closets and memories.

Some people say Tachikawa has no history. Somewhere in my mind, I thought so too. But one of only three immovable National Treasures in Tokyo is in this city; a village headman drew a black ship seven years before Perry; and on the Tama River, cormorants chased ayu in broad daylight. For 40 years this small museum has been writing it down, one sheet of paper at a time, and handing it out for free.

Leave the museum on its terrace, and below the slope a road runs on towards the Tama River. Along that road, the real versions of what you saw in the exhibition room are still quietly waiting.

Quiz answer

The answer is (A): people walked through the river by day. According to the museum’s visitor guide “Fishing Methods and Gear of the Tama River,” cormorant fishing on the Tama River was already practised in the Edo period, using a method called kachi-u performed on foot in daytime, unlike the method used on the Nagara River and elsewhere, done at night by bonfire light. In the Meiji era, it was also performed as a kind of show in front of the restaurants’ pleasure boats.

Before you go

  • Tachikawa City History and Folklore Museum: 3-12-34 Fujimicho, Tachikawa. Free admission. According to the city, it is open 9:00 to 16:30 and closed on Mondays (the following day if Monday is a public holiday) and over the New Year holidays. Check the latest opening days on the city’s facility page (Japanese): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004849/1004905.html
  • Getting there: A 20-minute walk from Nishi-Tachikawa Station on the JR Ome Line. Or from the South Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, take a bus bound for “Shindo Fukushima” (新道福島) or “Fujimicho Sōshajo” (富士見町操車場) and get off at “Danchi Nishi” (団地西), then walk 5 minutes. On a bus bound for “Tachikawa Station North Exit” (立川駅北口), get off at “Nogyo Shikenjo-mae” (農業試験場前) and walk 5 minutes. There is parking for about 8 cars; large vehicles cannot enter (according to the city).
  • Getting to Tachikawa: From Shinjuku, take the JR Chuo Line to Tachikawa. For Nishi-Tachikawa, change at Tachikawa to the JR Ome Line. Check the current timetable before you set off.
  • How long to allow: The city’s guided explanation of the permanent exhibition for groups is said to take about an hour. The ten visitor guides and the “Pocket Curator” app are introduced on the city’s page: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004849/1015895.html
  • Exhibitions and hands-on events: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004849/1019990/index.html (the city announces that on 17 October 2026 a viewing of the excavation at the Midorikawa-higashi site in neighbouring Kunitachi will be held at 3-29 Hagoromocho, Tachikawa).
  • Museum publications (the revised Koshi Nikki, Fishing Implements of the Middle Tama River and more), with how to buy by post: https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/kanko/bunka/1004244/1004851.html
  • Kawagoe-michi Old Folk House Park: 4-65 Saiwaicho, Tachikawa. Scheduled to be closed from 1 June 2026 to 31 March 2027 (according to the city). After it reopens: 15 minutes’ walk from Sunagawa-Nanaban Station on the Tama Monorail, 20 minutes from Tamagawajosui Station on the Seibu Line, or from stop No. 9 at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station take a bus bound for “Saiwaicho Danchi” (幸町団地) and get off at “Kominkaen Higashi” (古民家園東), 1 minute’s walk (according to the city): https://www.city.tachikawa.lg.jp/shisetsu/1008065/1008100.html
  • Combine it with: for the real stone pillar and the headman’s village of the diary, Fusai-ji Temple and Suwa Shrine in Shibasakicho. Down the slope from the museum, the Negawa Greenway and the Tama River. Once the folk house park reopens, the Tamagawa Aqueduct and the roads of Sunagawa. Each has its own story in this series.
  • Practical tips: Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on trains and buses alike. Fusai-ji and Suwa Shrine are places of worship: walk quietly and follow any notices.

Down from the terrace, a breather by the North Exit

The museum sits on a river terrace. Take the bus there and walk back down the slope to the Negawa stream or the Tama River, and by the time you reach Tachikawa Station your legs should be pleasantly tired.

One minute’s walk from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the third floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a hot yoga studio heated by lava-stone plates. Besides lava-stone hot yoga, it offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lesson.

It is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. Long after the museum closes at 16:30, there is plenty of time left.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental. Even with a heavy museum publication under your arm, you can drop in with nothing else.

Pregnant guests cannot take part in 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 lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

Walk from the village where the headman drew a black ship, and climb to the third floor of a building by the station. In Tachikawa, every slope you walk down brings you two hundred years closer to the present.

Cover photo: The original six-sided stone pillar at Fusai-ji Temple, photographed in 2016 before its repair, with carved Buddhist figures. (Photo: Nesnad / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

初日の汗は、予約した人だけが持ち帰れる。

体験レッスンを予約体験専用 03-6665-0898LINE

💬 ご質問がある場合はこちらからどうぞ

オンザショアのチャットで質問する（24時間受付）

レッスン内容・料金・体験のご予約など、気になることをお気軽にお尋ねください。

1

2


Warning: Attempt to read property "show_author" on false in /home/c1531448/public_html/ontheshore.jp/wp-content/themes/heal_tcd077/single.php on line 165

関連記事

PAGE TOP

TEL

体験レッスン

ご予約

質問する
ご体験予約