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」

Showa Kinen Park, Tachikawa: A Walking Guide to Highlights and History

Autumn at Showa Kinen Park: Cosmos, Autumn Leaves and the Riddle of the Square Ginkgoes

It is October now, and one of the seasons when the park draws its biggest crowds has begun.

The ginkgo avenue along the Canal, its flat-topped, box-clipped trees turning yellow in late autumn
The ginkgo avenue along the Canal, its flat-topped, box-clipped trees turning yellow in late autumn
Photo: Kakidai / CC BY-SA 4.0 / Wikimedia Commons

The fields of cosmos and yellow cosmos are in bloom from early September to early November. The big pink “Sensation” cosmos and the yellow cosmos, which starts flowering in the hot weather, are said to be the flowers that represent autumn at Showa Kinen Park. Every year from September to October there is a Cosmos Festival, followed in November by the Autumn Leaves Festival. On the Flower Hill, cosmos bloom in great numbers in autumn as well.

From late September to mid-October, the fragrant olive trees scattered through the park all flower at once. Your nose knows it is autumn before your eyes do. Red spider lilies bloom from mid-September to early October on Komorebi Hill and at Komorebi no Sato. The guide explains that they have long been planted around fields and along embankments to protect the crops.

For autumn colour, the Japanese Garden is the place. Created in April 1997, it covers about six hectares, the largest built in the Tokyo region since the war. The qualifier “since the war” seems to me to carry a polite deference to the great gardens of the feudal lords before it. It is a stroll garden around a pond, a style that developed in the Edo period, in which the view changes as you walk around the water. On its north side an artificial hill 30 metres high has been built and is used as “borrowed scenery.” Water springing from the North Forest beside the hill falls seven metres down a rock arrangement, becomes a stream and flows into the pond. Old Japanese gardens tend to be heavy with evergreens, but here deciduous broadleaf trees such as maples and konara oaks make up 60 percent of the planting, evoking the bright woodland of Musashino. The official site says that the Japanese Garden made it possible to enjoy autumn colours in the park, which had not been possible before.

On the garden’s western shore is “Kanpu-tei,” a single-storey wooden building in the sukiya style with a copper roof, where formal tea ceremonies are held. “Seichi-ken,” which juts out over the pond, seems from the far bank to float on the water. On the site of an airfield stands the craft of sukiya carpenters. That too is one of this park’s folds in time.

The autumn colours run from late October to early December. Since 2019 (Reiwa 1) there has also been “Autumn Night Walk,” with illuminations of the autumn leaves in the Japanese Garden and elsewhere. In the garden at night you look at red reflected on the water. It is hard to believe this is the same address where dogs and children were running around by day.

In autumn, the temperature difference between day and night in the park is large. As the sun sinks, the wind crossing the meadow turns suddenly cold. A sweaty shirt sticks to your back, and its chill tells you just how far you have walked.

And from late October the ginkgoes begin to turn. At last, let me tell you about that avenue.

Come in through the Tachikawa Gate and the first thing that leaps out at you is the Canal. A “canal,” in landscaping terms, means a long, narrow, straight water channel. Along a 200-metre channel with five fountains large and small, 106 ginkgoes stand in symmetrical double rows on each side. These ginkgoes were moved here from trees planted in the base era. At the far end of the channel, above the big fountain, stands a monument by Yoshiro Mineta titled “Toward Tomorrow’s Sky.”

As I said at the start, the ginkgo avenue along the Canal is square. At first I thought there must be an extraordinarily fastidious gardener. Next I suspected the practical concern of keeping too many ginkgo nuts from falling on the path. Both guesses were wrong.

The answer is in the sky. According to the official website, the aviation height restriction for the Self-Defense Force runway next to the park is set at eight metres, so the trees must be kept at seven metres. Simply chopping them off at seven metres would have ruined the scenery, so the sides, the front and the back of the rows were neatly clipped and shaped into boxes. Merging with the straight lines of the Canal, they became a view that exists only in this park.

The runway next door is the runway of that disaster base. The old airfield was split into two pillars, a park and a disaster base. One of them still uses the sky. And so the trees of the other must not poke their heads into it. The ginkgo avenue is square because the sky over Tachikawa still belongs to aircraft.

Since learning this, I can no longer laugh at the square ginkgoes. If anything, I admire them. Someone took trees subject to a restriction and, instead of letting them look restricted, turned them into a form of their own. Even with the sky pressing down on their heads, the avenue goes on being an avenue, and turns yellow, properly, every year.

On the other hand, the “Katarai Ginkgo Avenue,” about seven minutes’ walk from the Nishi-Tachikawa Gate, is about 300 metres long. There is no height restriction here, and the trees grow in their natural shape. Because the ground rises and falls, the straight avenue gains depth. These too are trees kept from the days of the US base. At the peak of the yellow leaves in November a golden tunnel appears, and since 2019 it has also been illuminated.

The same trees from the same base: one held down by the sky, the other reaching up into it. Walk the two avenues one after the other and you see two faces of the time that has flowed over one piece of land.

Tachikawa is sometimes called a town that has everything and nothing. But I know of no other town with a park of square ginkgoes. A park that hangs Japan’s biggest hammock in its woods, keeps the nation’s emergency exit next door, and welcomed 80 million visitors in 33 years lies ten minutes from the station. If the town is thought of as plain, it is only because it is bad at talking about itself.

Flat land accepts everything. Aircraft, barracks, lawns, woodland, fireworks, dogs. The park does not hide that century. It is written plainly on the square ginkgoes and on the hill of rubble, in letters that only those who try to read them can see.

The square ginkgoes and the woodland on the base’s rubble are a single ride from Shinjuku on the Chuo Line, or from Kawasaki on the Nambu Line. The park keeps its present shape thanks to the hands of citizen volunteers who cut the undergrowth and tend the farmhouse garden. Next weekend, come and see the marks of that care for yourself, on your own feet.

Answer to the Quiz

The answer is B. The great zelkova was not planted for the park; it was already standing there before the park existed. When it was found it was 17 metres tall with an estimated age of 70 to 80 years; today it is over a hundred. The designer decided to make the meadow around this tree, and Minna no Harappa was born. The tree came first, the meadow second.

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

Before You Go

  • Getting there: from central Tokyo, take the JR Chuo Line from Shinjuku to Tachikawa with no change of trains. From Kanagawa, the JR Nambu Line links Kawasaki and Tachikawa (35.5 km) with no change. From the Yokohama area you can also take the Yokohama Line to Hachioji and change to the Chuo Line. Check timetables and journey times on JR East’s official site. An IC card such as Suica or PASMO saves buying a ticket for every ride.
  • Gates: the park lies across the cities of Tachikawa and Akishima. From the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station to the Akebono Gate is about a ten-minute walk (head north from the exit); from Tachikawa-Kita Station on the Tama Monorail to the Akebono Gate, about eight minutes. The Tachikawa Gate is about 18 minutes from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station; the Nishi-Tachikawa Gate about two minutes from Nishi-Tachikawa Station on the JR Ome Line; the Akishima Gate about ten minutes from Higashi-Nakagami Station on the JR Ome Line; the Sunagawa Gate about 20 minutes from Musashi-Sunagawa Station on the Seibu Haijima Line (all according to the official access guide).
  • Going round: the Park Train takes about 50 to 60 minutes for a circuit (the route and frequency vary by day). The cycling course is about 14 km, and bicycles can be rented at the cycle centres at the Tachikawa, Nishi-Tachikawa and Sunagawa gates. You must return the bicycle to the centre where you rented it, so plan to come back to the gate you entered by. On foot, the Tachikawa Gate to Komorebi no Sato takes about 38 minutes.
  • A sample day: enter by the Tachikawa Gate and walk past the Canal and the meadow to the Japanese Garden, and in flower season on to the Flower Hill. On the way back to the station, combine the public art of Faret Tachikawa and the view from the Tama Monorail, both covered in this feature, and you have walked Tachikawa in a day. If you leave by the Sunagawa Gate on the north side, you are close to the Tamagawa Aqueduct and the old village of Sunagawa.
  • Dog run: each visit requires a certificate of a combination vaccine covering at least three diseases given within the past year, plus a rabies vaccination certificate or tag (or the “Wan Pass!” registration card). Check hours and detailed rules on the official “Dog Run” page.
  • Fees and hours: the Midori no Bunka Zone just inside the Akebono Gate is free. Admission to the rest of the park, opening hours, closing days, and Park Train and bicycle rental fares can change, so check the official website for the latest. Bloom times vary by year; the official “flower information” page posts weekly updates.
  • Closure: the Showa Emperor Memorial Museum is officially announced as closed for major renovation from 1 June to 27 November 2026.
  • Manners: the Dragonfly Wetland and the bird sanctuary are kept for wildlife; stay on the paths and leave the creatures in peace.
  • Official website: https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/ (access https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/access/ / flowers and plants https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/flower-information/ / dog run https://www.showakinen-koen.jp/facility/facility-522/ )

After the Walk, at Tachikawa Station North Exit

After walking 180 hectares, what stays in your body is heavy legs, a back chilled by the wind, and breath that has grown a little shallow. It seems a shame to me to take all that straight home.

Leave the park by the Akebono Gate and retrace your steps to the station. One minute on foot from the North Exit of JR Tachikawa Station, on the third floor of the Etoile Building at 2-14-10 Akebonocho, Tachikawa, Tokyo, is On the Shore Tachikawa (オンザショア立川店), a lava-stone hot yoga studio. Besides hot yoga on heated lava-stone floors, it offers room-temperature yoga, Pilates, women-only kickboxercise, boxercise, HIIT and personal training, with more than 25 kinds of yoga lessons.

For Ryo Miyagawa, who runs the studio, and his wife, Showa Kinen Park is a special place, they say. They go to the summer fireworks every year, and they are deeply fond of the dog run, which they call “rare around here.” The owner, too, walks the great emptiness that spreads just north of where people sweat at the North Exit.

The studio is open every day from 8:00 to 23:30. You can loosen up first thing in the morning before heading to the park, or warm up again at night after the park has closed and you have cooled down.

If it is your first time, there is a trial yoga lesson for ¥1,980 including tax, with two bath towels, one face towel and a mat to rent included. Pregnant guests cannot join 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 is at https://ontheshore.jp/ , and trial lessons can be booked at https://site.locaop.jp/C0aVK?_src=hp .

You deepen, one breath at a time, the breathing that grew shallow on the meadow. At the end of a day spent walking the site of a runway, it is not a bad way to land.

Cover photo: Minna no Harappa under a September blue sky, with a low line of trees beyond the grass (Photo: Kakidai / 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

3


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