Tachikawa Station Guide: The History Walk of Tama’s Busiest Station

Tachikawa Station since 1889: how a stop on the edge of a village of 1,920 became Tama’s busiest station, from a North Exit traded for water to decks and a monorail.

日本語で読む（Japanese version）

154,091 a day. That is the average daily number of passengers boarding at Tachikawa Station (立川駅) in fiscal 2024, as published by JR East. People getting off are not counted. Those getting on, alone, add up to this.

In the year the station opened, 1,920 people lived in Tachikawa village. And the station was put not in the middle of the village but on its northern edge. The heart of the village lay to the south, along the Koshu Kaido highway; around the station, it is said, there were only fields and woods.

Today, in JR East’s table, Tachikawa sits above every other station in the Tama area, the western part of Tokyo Metropolis beyond the 23 central city wards. How did a little stop on the edge of a village become the station with the most passengers in all of Tama? Carrying that question, I decided to step out through the ticket gates. There are five sets of gates. Which one to leave by? I am already lost.

Tachikawa Station’s history begins at a North Exit on the edge of the village

“The Opening of the Kobu Railway,” a visitor’s guide compiled by the Tachikawa City Museum of History and Folklore, records the beginning like this. On 11 April 1889 (Meiji 22), the Kobu Railway, today’s JR Chuo Line, opened between Shinjuku and Tachikawa, and Tachikawa Station opened at the same time. In August of the same year, the line was extended to Hachioji. And in the chronology column there is one small added line: ticket gate on the north side only.

Why only the north? “Kono Machi Archives,” a record of local history published by Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Realty, carries what looks like the answer. Tachikawa village had been eager to attract the railway, but hesitated to supply the water that the steam locomotives needed from the Shibasaki branch channel, the village’s precious source of water for daily life. Sunagawa village, its northern neighbour, agreed to supply the water instead, and in exchange, the station’s entrance was placed facing Sunagawa, that is, on the north side.

The door faced the village that gave the water. The front of a station, it seems, can be decided for very down-to-earth reasons.

Tachikawa Monogatari, the city’s history newsletter, also notes in its administrative timeline that the station opened on the Sunagawa side, north of the tracks, and that the South Exit was opened in 1930 (Showa 5). The village centre was to the south, yet the entrance was only to the north. People living in the south had to go around to the far side of the tracks every time they went to the station.

The village’s name, too, was not originally Tachikawa. Until 1881 (Meiji 14), eight years before the station opened, it was called Shibasaki village. According to Tachikawa Monogatari, there was another Shibasaki village in the same Kitatama District, the Shibasaki in today’s Chofu City, and to avoid confusion the name was changed to Tachikawa. So the name “Tachikawa Station” exists thanks to another village of the same name in the same district. If Chofu had not had a Shibasaki village, we might be changing trains at Shibasaki Station today.

So why didn’t the line run through the village centre, instead of out on the edge like this? The reason is carved into the shape of the track itself.

Where 25 kilometres of straight track ends

Board the Chuo Line at Shinjuku and the train swings in a big curve to face west, and after that it hardly turns at all. The railway news site Norimono News writes that the line runs straight for about 25 kilometres from Higashi-Nakano to Tachikawa. All About’s railway guide says it is reputed to be the second-longest straight section in Japan after the 28.7 kilometres between Shiraoi and Numanohata on Hokkaido’s Muroran Main Line. The guide adds that, because of curves around platforms and elevated-track construction, it is no longer perfectly straight. But on a map it still looks like a line drawn with a ruler.

Why so straight? The museum’s guide writes that the Kobu Railway was first planned to run along the Koshu Kaido and then along the Ome Kaido, but both plans reportedly fell through in the face of strong opposition from residents along those roads. The people of Tachikawa and Sunagawa villages then campaigned eagerly to attract the line, and as a result the present track was laid running straight across the Musashino Plateau.

As for the reasons for the opposition, Norimono News introduces the theory that people feared the smoke and vibration of locomotives would stop their crops from growing, and that faster travel by rail would ruin the business of the post towns along the highways. To people along the old highways, the railway was a machine for stealing customers. Choose woods and fields with few houses, and the line can be drawn straight without hesitation.

Here is the first clue to the mystery. Tachikawa Station is on the edge of the village not because the village was backward. Because the busy highway towns rejected the railway, the line ran across the empty plateau, and Tachikawa, which had little bustle of its own yet, went out of its way to welcome it. The guide writes that the Kobu Railway turned Tachikawa, a mere farming village on the fringe of the Koshu Kaido, into the central city of the Tama district.

A railway that had been turned away, and a village that invited it in. The history of Tachikawa’s station front begins with that handshake.

At the end of 25 kilometres of straight line stands Tachikawa Station.

But if a railway line were enough to make a town prosper, every station along it would have grown the same way. In Tachikawa, another force was at work.

Bokusui’s teahouse, and the courting of a middle school

Once the station was built, people gathered in front of it. According to Kono Machi Archives, a teahouse opened for passengers waiting for trains, and there was a big cherry tree. In 1906 (Meiji 39), the poet Wakayama Bokusui stopped at Tachikawa and wrote a poem about seeing someone off at the teahouse in front of the station. Where the teahouse stood is now the bus terminal, and in one corner stands a stone monument carved with Bokusui’s poem. The Tachikawa City Library’s research guide also notes that the monument in front of Tachikawa Station appears in a book that visits Bokusui poem-stones all over the country.

The villagers did not just sit back and admire their station’s convenience. The museum’s guide writes that we must not forget the efforts of the people who actively drew in government offices and the Tokyo Prefectural Second Middle School (today’s Tokyo Metropolitan Tachikawa High School), using the ease of transport to build their town.

The Prefectural Second Middle School opened on the south side of the station in 1901 (Meiji 34). According to Kono Machi Archives, it was the second such school in Tokyo Prefecture after the First Middle School (today’s Hibiya High School), and the towns of Hachioji, Fuchu and Ome were also candidates. Three reasons are given for choosing Tachikawa village. It was easy to commute to by rail. Land for the school was donated. And there was no entertainment district, so the environment was good for study.

Having nothing was the winning card. Reading that sentence today amid the crowds in front of the station, I can’t help smiling. Tachikawa 120 years ago was a town chosen for its quiet.

In 1894 (Meiji 27), the Ome Railway linked Tachikawa and Ome. The city’s timeline lists “Ome Railway opens” under that year. As a Rikkyo University economics paper, “The Founding of the Ome Railway and Asano Soichiro,” explains starting from Ome’s limestone resources, the railway was built to carry limestone, the raw material of cement, out of the mountains. The route carrying mountain stone to Tokyo connected with the Chuo Line at Tachikawa. With a second line, Tachikawa went from being just a stop along the way to a station where lines meet.

In 1906 (Meiji 39), the Kobu Railway was bought by the state and became the Chuo Line. According to the chronology in the museum’s guide, Tachikawa Station’s building was rebuilt in December 1912 (Taisho 1). Twenty-three years after opening, the stop finally got its second station building.

Even so, Meiji-era Tachikawa was still small. What changed the shape of the town completely came from the sky.

The airfield, the South Exit, and three lines converging

In 1922 (Taisho 11), Tachikawa Airfield opened north of the station. Tachikawa Monogatari writes that Tachikawa village’s population, 1,920 in 1889, had shot up to 5,303 by 1922 and to 6,895 the following year. That works out to more than 1,500 extra people in a single year. In December 1923 (Taisho 12), Tachikawa village became a town.

In the Showa era, the lines multiplied further. In 1929 (Showa 4), the electrification of the Chuo Line reached Tachikawa, and in December that year the Nambu Railway, today’s JR Nambu Line, was completed all the way from Kawasaki to Tachikawa. According to Kono Machi Archives, the Nambu Railway was originally planned to carry gravel from the Tama River, and the name on its first application was the “Tamagawa Gravel Railway.” Later it also took on the job of carrying Ome limestone to Kawasaki. The next year, 1930 (Showa 5), the Itsukaichi Railway also began running into Tachikawa.

Limestone from the mountains and gravel from the river, all converging on Tachikawa. Stone and gravel became cement, became concrete, became the city of Tokyo. Tachikawa Station was a knot on the path of the materials that built the capital.

And in March 1930, the South Exit finally opened. It was the 41st year since the station opened. According to the museum’s guide, an underpass beneath the station followed two years later, in 1932 (Showa 7). For people living to the south, a 41-year detour was finally over.

The traveller’s detour quiz

How many years after Tachikawa Station opened did it get a South Exit?

• A　1 year
• B　11 years
• C　41 years

The answer comes near the end of this article.

When the South Exit opened, the landscape south of the station changed too. According to Tachikawa Monogatari, land consolidation was carried out south of the station from around 1927 (Showa 2), laying out roads and drainage channels in a chessboard grid. Once the South Exit opened, a shopping street (shotengai, a street of small local shops) grew up along South Exit Avenue, and a post office and banks opened. If streets south of the station meet at neat right angles today, it is because the town simply inherited the lines drawn when the fields were tidied up.

Under the same year, 1929, that the Nambu Railway was completed, the city’s timeline also notes that Japan Air Transport began Japan’s first scheduled air service between Tachikawa and Osaka. On the ground, three railways met; in the sky, scheduled flights left for Osaka. There cannot have been many towns in Japan at the time that had both a land gateway and an air gateway in place in the same year.

In December 1940 (Showa 15), Tachikawa town became a city. According to Tachikawa Monogatari, its population at the end of that year was 34,693, and by 1944 (Showa 19), with workers pouring into the munitions factories, it reached 51,126. In that same year, 1944, the Ome Electric Railway, the Nambu Railway and the Itsukaichi Railway were bought by the state and became the national railways’ Ome, Nambu and Itsukaichi lines. Tracks laid by separate companies came together under a single owner.

That same year, according to Kono Machi Archives, buildings were demolished in front of the North Exit and elsewhere to create firebreaks against air raids. The city’s timeline records that in 1945 (Showa 20), the city suffered 13 air raids and heavy damage. The station of a town that held an airfield and munitions factories had to pay that price too.

Floodwater at the station, and cinema lights

As the population grew, the weak spots in front of the station showed. According to Kono Machi Archives, as early as 1925 (Taisho 14), voices in the town assembly called for something to be done about flooding in front of the station. Around the North Exit, it seems, rainwater would not drain away. Work on a drainage channel began around 1943 (Showa 18), was still unfinished when the war ended, and was completed in 1947 (Showa 22). Two years later, the channel was named the Midorikawa, and in 1954 (Showa 29) its banks were rebuilt in concrete.

The North Exit, opened in exchange for water, was now plagued by water. The station’s history, it seems, can never quite break with water. The name Midorikawa-dori, the street running north from the North Exit, keeps the memory of that drainage channel. The city’s timeline also notes that landscaping work on Midorikawa-dori began in 1988 (Showa 63).

In that same year, 1925, Tachikawa’s first cinema, the Tachikawa Kinema, opened at the North Exit. Its name appears in the city’s timeline too. According to Kono Machi Archives, the Tachikawa Engeikan, a variety theatre, opened at the South Exit the same year, and in the 1960s there were ten cinemas in the city. A town where people stepped off the train and were swallowed straight into the dark. Tachikawa’s station front had its night lights from early on.

Let me picture Tachikawa’s station front from the late 1950s into the early 1970s. Isetan at the North Exit, Marui at the South Exit, the multi-tenant Tachikawa Ginza Department Store and the Chubu Department Store. Between them, the signboards of the city’s ten cinemas. Buses from five companies converged on the station, bringing people in from the villages to the north and from the banks of the Tama River to the south. Shopping at a department store, then a film on the way home. Plenty of people must have spent their days off like that. The line-up of shops is completely different from the one young people spend a day in now, in the station building and the station-interior mall. And yet the mood of saying “let’s go to Tachikawa” may run surprisingly unbroken from those days to now.

Tachikawa Station in numbers

• 1,920 — Tachikawa village’s population the year the station opened. Today the station boards the equivalent of about 80 of those villages every day.
• 41 — Years the station had only a North Exit. People living to the south went around the tracks for nearly half a century.
• About 25 — Kilometres of straight track from Higashi-Nakano to Tachikawa. It’s not that the line is bad at turning. It just had no reason to.
• 5 — The number of ticket-gate areas today: East, West, North, South and Granduo. On opening day there was just one, facing north.
• 154,091 — Average daily boardings in fiscal 2024. 14th among all JR East stations.
• 37.5 — Kilometres from Tokyo Station. Forty minutes by Special Rapid, the city says.

The numbers keep rising, as we have seen. So after the war, in a town of burned-out lots and an American base, what did the station become?

Why did department stores gather at Tachikawa Station?

After the war, the airfield north of the station became a US military base. I’ll leave that story for another time and follow a different change in front of the station: department stores.

A press release issued by Isetan Mitsukoshi in 2017 contains this sentence. Isetan Tachikawa opened near Tachikawa Station on 10 October 1947 (Showa 22) as Isetan’s very first branch store. The Shinjuku-based department store chose Tachikawa as the site of its first branch. Two years after the war ended, in an age of still-visible ruins. When Tachikawa people say “Isetan’s first branch was by our station,” it is not boasting; it is simply quoting company history.

Follow the timeline in Kono Machi Archives and the station front begins to look like a game of territory among department stores. In 1952 (Showa 27), Marui opened its Tachikawa store at the South Exit. In 1956 (Showa 31), Isetan Tachikawa started business at the North Exit. In 1961 (Showa 36), the multi-tenant Tachikawa Ginza Department Store opened, followed the next year by the Chubu Department Store. And within the single year of 1970 (Showa 45), Marui moved into the North Exit area in February, Isetan moved into a new building in September, and Tachikawa Takashimaya opened in the rebuilt Tachikawa Ginza Department Store building. Three stores on the move in one year. If anyone was redrawing the map of the station front every year, they must have been busy that year.

The same archive also writes that in fiscal 1972, of the total sales of the shopping streets around the station, the South Exit accounted for about 20 percent and the North Exit about 80 percent. The South Exit, opened 41 years late, was still chasing the North Exit in sales too.

So why did department stores gather at Tachikawa rather than any other station in Tama? The clue lies not in the railway but in buses. Tachikawa Monogatari describes Tachikawa Station around 1957 (Showa 32) as a terminal where the bus routes of five companies linked the surrounding area. Bus networks based at Tachikawa Station became the north–south transport that the highways and railways had lacked, and supported the city’s commercial growth, it says.

The Chuo Line only runs east and west. People living north on the Musashino Plateau or south across the Tama River needed north–south transport to reach the east–west railway. That transport converged on Tachikawa Station. The place where an east–west railway and north–south buses crossed. If you were going shopping, that was the nearest place. Draw the lines on a map and why department stores chose this station becomes surprisingly clear.

Later, that north–south transport rose into the air as the monorail. In 2001 (Heisei 13), Isetan Tachikawa moved into the North Exit redevelopment district and opened a new store, the archive records. The first branch, after several moves near the station, is still in front of it.

But even with department stores lined up and buses gathering, the station itself remained an old Showa-era building. The gates were split between north and south, and the two sides of the station were not yet connected above the tracks. The station truly changed its shape only after the base to the north was gone.