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 Schools Walk: History of Night Classes, Bells, Antarctica

The college of bells: Kunitachi College of Music came to Tachikawa with its night division

The campus of Kunitachi College of Music (国立音楽大学) is in Kashiwa-cho, Tachikawa. Why a college named after Kunitachi — the neighbouring city — stands in Tachikawa I explained in the feature’s article on culture. (A small trap for visitors: the characters 国立 also mean “national”, read kokuritsu, but here they are read Kunitachi, a place name, and the college is private.) Here I want to look at that move from a slightly different angle.

The auditorium of Kunitachi College of Music in Kashiwa-cho, with the tiered bells of the carillon in front.
The auditorium of Kunitachi College of Music in Kashiwa-cho, with the tiered bells of the carillon in front.
Photo: Nyao148 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons

According to the college’s history, its forerunner, the Tokyo Higher School of Music, opened in temporary premises in Yotsuya in 1926, and in November of that year moved into a building it had put up in the Kunitachi university town. It became Kunitachi College of Music in 1950. And in April 1955, a second division — that is, a night division — was established, with four departments: vocal music, instrumental music, composition, and music education.

Work by day, study singing by night. Japan once had a music college’s night division for students like that. When I read this line, I sat thinking for a while. How did they square their instrument practice with the tiredness of the day’s work? The history does not go that far.

In April 1966, the college began teaching at its “Josuidai campus”. The name presumably means “the heights by the aqueduct” — the Tamagawa Aqueduct. The move was not made all at once, then, but edged gradually northward. In April 1973, the second division stopped admitting students. In April 1978, the college’s official location was changed to Tachikawa. In June the following year, 1979, the second division was abolished. When the college’s address became Tachikawa, the night division was still there on the register.

In November 1982 the auditorium was completed. Its main hall seats 1,290. At the front stands a pipe organ, the Grand Concert Organ, which the college describes as equipment among the finest in Japan. Full orchestras, choirs and operas are performed here, and so are the entrance and graduation ceremonies. There is also a 500-seat small hall.

In front of the auditorium stands the college’s symbol: a carillon, 47 bells large and small. They are rung as the signal that the doors are opening whenever a concert or other event is held. In a residential district in the north of Tachikawa, bells announce the start of a performance. If you think of it as a school chime made of 47 bells, you understand that this college is in a different league.

The college also has a library. Built around music, it holds 400,000 items, including precious materials such as first editions of Beethoven’s scores and early-modern Japanese music. The college itself writes that it would be no exaggeration to call it “the heart of music research in Japan”. About 150,000 books, about 150,000 scores, and about 80,000 audiovisual items. A library with as many scores as books is quite hard to picture.

In July 2016 the college set up the Kunitachi College of Music Community Music Centre, which organises the ways local residents can take part in the college’s teaching and research and share it with the outside world. The college writes that it aims to create local culture through music. Its website introduces Kunitachi College of Music as the only music college in Tokyo’s Tama area. And in 2026 it reached its centenary. Of those hundred years, the time it has spent in Tachikawa will soon be half.

Tachikawa’s schools by the numbers

  • 18 — graduates at Furitsu Nichu’s first graduation, in 1905. Not even one class today.
  • 400 — bicycles that Tachikawa High School’s bike parking can hold. Mornings at the old school begin with the sound of brakes.
  • 17:20 — the time lessons begin in Tachikawa High School’s part-time course. After the daytime pupils’ bicycles have gone, the classroom lights come on.
  • 6,700 — and more: Tachitei’s graduates. A night school has sent out as many people as a small town.
  • 47 — bells in Kunitachi College of Music’s carillon. Quite a lot, for a school chime.
  • 1,290 — seats in the college’s main hall. The entrance ceremony and Beethoven’s Ninth use the same chairs.

The wanderer’s quiz

When was Tachikawa High School’s part-time course, “Tachitei”, opened? (A) In 1901, at the same time as Furitsu Nichu itself; (B) in 1937, as a night middle school; (C) in 1948, when the school became a new-system high school. The answer comes at the end.

From the college’s bells, let us move to Midori-cho. There, people studying Antarctica and the Japanese language are writing doctoral theses.

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A graduate school for Antarctica and Japanese: the campus in Midori-cho

I walked Tachikawa’s Midori-cho — the district where national research institutes gathered on the site of the former base — in the feature’s article on polar science. What is less well known is that it is also a graduate school.

The National Institute of Japanese Literature in Midori-cho, Tachikawa: a large white building behind young trees.
The National Institute of Japanese Literature in Midori-cho, Tachikawa: a large white building behind young trees.
Photo: Tamago915 / CC BY-SA 3.0 / Wikimedia Commons

Open the 2026 prospectus of SOKENDAI, the Graduate University for Advanced Studies (総合研究大学院大学), and four addresses in Midori-cho, Tachikawa appear. The Japanese Literature course is based at the National Institute of Japanese Literature, and its students study and research at the institute in Tachikawa. The Japanese Language Sciences course is at the National Institute for Japanese Language and Linguistics. The Statistical Science course is at the Institute of Statistical Mathematics. And the Polar Science course is at the National Institute of Polar Research; its students, the prospectus says, study at the polar institute in Tachikawa.

The Polar Science course sets out to explore the principles of natural phenomena that appear in polar regions — the North and South Poles, high mountains and the like. The careers listed for its graduates include researchers at universities and national research institutes. The Japanese Literature course takes primary sources, mainly documents, as its object of study. Graduate students reading classical books, graduate students following the nature of the polar regions, and graduate students of statistics are studying within walking distance of one another in the same district. A graduate school that does not even have a campus name lies quietly buried in Tachikawa’s city blocks.

Walk north from Tachikawa Station and in Midori-cho you find the National Hospital Organization Disaster Medical Center. On its grounds is the Tachikawa Faculty of Nursing of Tokyo Healthcare University. According to the university, its Tachikawa campus, the main campus for its course in disaster nursing, opened on the grounds of the Disaster Medical Center in April 2016. A faculty specialising in disaster nursing, in the district that is the nation’s disaster-response base. That combination does not look like coincidence.

Graduate students and nursing students. None of them stand out in the crowds in front of the station. Perhaps half the reason Tachikawa does not look like a student town lies here.

Twelve years in one school, and the station where students change trains

Tachikawa also has a first-in-Japan among public schools. Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa Kokusai Secondary School (都立立川国際中等教育学校) opened in April 2008, built on the foundations of the Metropolitan Kitatama High School. In 2022 an attached elementary school opened. The school’s guide calls it the first public school in Japan to offer twelve years of continuous education. The elementary school’s badge carries on the basic design of the badge of Kitatama High School, the parent school, with “P-12” added to stand for elementary-through-high-school education. There are children here who spend the years from six to eighteen in one school. I covered this, and the fact that most of the school grounds spill over into the neighbouring city of Kunitachi, in the feature’s article on Japan’s firsts, so here I will add just one thing: the badge of the old parent high school is now pinned to the chests of first-graders, too.

Even so, if you look for university students around Tachikawa Station, many of them are heading for the ticket gates of the monorail. Follow the Tama Toshi Monorail map from north to south: past Tachikawa-Kita and Tachikawa-Minami you come to a station called Chuo-Daigaku-Meisei-Daigaku. Chuo University’s Tama campus lies on its west side and Meisei University’s Hino campus on its east, both linked directly to the station by a pedestrian deck. Further on is another station named Otsuka-Teikyo-Daigaku. Stations bearing universities’ names are linked to Tachikawa by a single line. Tachikawa is not a university town; it is the town where people going to university change trains. (More on the line in our Tama Monorail guide.)

A town where people change trains does not stand out. Those passing through are not counted as studying there. Still, people with instrument cases on their backs and high-school students hugging their study guides brushing past each other at the gates is probably not a rare sight at this station. That, at least, is how I imagine it.

Let us go back to the opening question. Is Tachikawa a student town?

If you count only by the daytime timetable, the answer is closer to “no”. The stations named after universities are outside the city, and most of the people walking in front of the station are office workers. But set the clock to 5:20 in the evening and there is a night classroom that has been lit for 90 years. Set it to the late 1950s and 1960s, and there were music students studying singing at night. Zoom the map in on Midori-cho, and there are graduate students of Antarctica, of Japanese and of statistics. Tachikawa’s places of learning are scattered across the town’s least conspicuous hours and places. That is the only reason you cannot see them all at once.

The people of Tachikawa need not think of it as “a town without schools”. Since the days of Furitsu Nichu in the Meiji era, the town has gathered the children of Tama, let people who work by day study at night, welcomed a music college named after Kunitachi, and trained researchers of Antarctica. If they want to boast, a quiet voice will do. That suits the style of a school with no uniform.

If you come to Tachikawa at the weekend, go out as far as Tamagawa-Josui Station and walk along the railway line in front of the music college. If you are lucky, somewhere a bell will be ringing.

Answer to the quiz

The answer is (B), 1937. According to Tachikawa High School’s greeting, the part-time course opened in 1937 as the night middle school of the Tokyo Prefectural Second Middle School. That was 36 years after Furitsu Nichu opened, and the course stopped taking new students from the 2025 school year.

Before you go

  • Etiquette: Every one of these schools is a place where its students are learning, and you cannot go inside. Just pass by the gates, and if you take photographs, make sure no students are in them. For days when outsiders can come in — concerts, public lectures, school information sessions — check each school’s official website.
  • From central Tokyo and Kanagawa: Tachikawa Station is reached without changing trains from Shinjuku on the JR Chuo Line. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line runs directly between Kawasaki and Tachikawa. Check times and journey lengths on the JR East website.
  • Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School: 2-13-5 Nishiki-cho, Tachikawa, in the district on the South Exit side of JR Tachikawa Station. Official website (Japanese): https://www.metro.ed.jp/tachikawa-h/ — history: https://www.metro.ed.jp/tachikawa-h/our_school/history.html
  • Tachikawa High School part-time course: https://www.metro.ed.jp/tachikawa-he/
  • Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa Midori High School: Nishiki-cho, Tachikawa. According to the school, it is a 12-minute walk from JR Nishi-Kunitachi Station and a 21-minute walk from JR Tachikawa Station. School pamphlet (Japanese): https://www.toritsuko.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/wp/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/東京都立立川緑高等学校　学校パンフレット.pdf
  • Kunitachi College of Music: 5-5-1 Kashiwa-cho, Tachikawa. According to the college’s access guide, it is a 7-minute walk along the Seibu railway line from Tamagawa-Josui Station on the Seibu Haijima Line and the Tama Monorail. For the concert schedule, see the official site: https://www.kunitachi.ac.jp/
  • The research institutes of Midori-cho: the National Institute of Japanese Literature (10-3 Midori-cho, Tachikawa) and others. Walk north from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail or from JR Tachikawa Station. For the opening hours of public facilities such as the Antarctic and Arctic Science Museum, check each institution’s official site.
  • Practical tips: Carry an IC transport card such as Suica or PASMO; it works on JR, the monorail and Seibu trains.
  • Putting it together: In the morning, get off at Tamagawa-Josui Station and walk past the music college and along the green path of the Tamagawa Aqueduct (the route I walked in the Tamagawa Aqueduct and Sunagawa article). Take the monorail back to Tachikawa-Kita Station for the research district of Midori-cho and Showa Kinen Park. Swing round to Nishiki-cho on the South Exit side in the evening, and you will have linked the town of day schools and night schools in a single day.

After your school-town walk, at the North Exit of Tachikawa Station

Outside every school gate, long walls and rows of trees run on and on. Walk from the music college’s railway line to Midori-cho and on to Nishiki-cho, and your legs will be tighter than you expected. On your shoulders you will feel the weight not of textbooks but of a map.

One minute’s walk from the North Exit of 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. As well as 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. Even after the hour when the night classroom’s lights come on, there is still time.

A trial yoga lesson costs ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a yoga mat included in the rental, so you can drop in with nothing but yourself.

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 Eiken Grade 1, Japan’s top English qualification, and a perfect TOEIC score, worked as a translator and overseas interpreter at Nomura Securities, and lived in Alaska for three years — often helps guests from the US bases in English herself. Overseas guests have praised the English support in their Google reviews. If you would like help in English, just mention it when you book.

Studio information: https://ontheshore.jp/ — prices: https://ontheshore.jp/price/ — trial lesson booking: https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp

Just as there is no set hour for learning, there is no set hour for loosening up your body. Tachikawa’s night is still long.

Cover photo: The main gate of Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School, with the school-name stone and pale pink buildings behind. (Photo: Abasaa / Public domain / Wikimedia Commons)

Information as of October 2026.

More Tachikawa Walks

All Tachikawa Walks (English)

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