Otaguro Park, Ogikubo: Autumn Leaves, Ginkgo Avenue and the 2026 Light-Up

Tokyo · Suginami · Ogikubo · autumn leaves 2026

By Nobu · photos taken on 5 December 2025 · park and light-up details checked on official pages on 18 October 2026 · Sources at the end

Otaguro Park is a Japanese garden run by Suginami City, free by day, a 10-minute walk from Ogikubo Station, on the former estate of the music critic Otaguro Motoo. Its ginkgo avenue and maples usually colour from late November into early December. The 2026 autumn light-up runs from Friday 27 November to Sunday 6 December 2026. I photographed the garden on the afternoon of 5 December 2025.

What Otaguro Park is

Suginami City opened the park on 1 October 1981 on the estate of Otaguro Motoo (1893–1979), a pioneering music critic in Japan. Otaguro Motoo moved to Ogikubo in 1933 and lived there until 1979. The city laid out the 8,972 m² site as a kaiyu-shiki garden, a stroll garden with a path that loops round a pond, the first of its kind among Suginami’s ward parks, keeping the large trees that were already there.

Otaguro Motoo studied piano under Hanka Schjelderup Petzold at the Tokyo Music School, went to the University of London in 1912, and came home in 1914 when the First World War began. The park’s site credits Otaguro Motoo with first introducing Debussy and Stravinsky to Japan.

The gate and the ginkgo avenue

The main gate is built entirely of hinoki, with a tiled gable roof and earthen walls either side. From it a white granite path runs straight for 70 m between ginkgo trees more than 100 years old, then climbs low steps to the tea-room building.

The Japanese notice at the gate said, in translation: “During the autumn light-up: 9:00–16:30, last entry 16:15. Light-up tickets go on sale from 17:00.” Those were the 2025 arrangements.

On 5 December 2025 the crowns were still mostly yellow, and fallen leaves lay thick on both sides of the path.

The lawn, the stream and the pond

From the tea-room veranda the lawn slopes gently down to the pond. A few red pines stand on it, with bamboo grass at their feet, and oaks and zelkovas grow on its left. A narrow stream from a well in the courtyard behind the tea room circles the building and widens through the trees into the pond, which is edged with Tsukuba stones and planting, has an azumaya pavilion on its bank, and holds nishikigoi koi.

The tea room and rest house

The building at the end of the avenue joins the tea room, a rest area and the park office with a roofed corridor; a large pine beam spans the rest area. The eight-mat tea room, finished in Akita cedar, is rented out through the city’s Sazanka-net booking system.

The memorial hall

On the western side of the lawn stands the brick-coloured building Otaguro Motoo built in 1933 as a workroom, a Western-style building unusual for its time. The two-storey wooden building, renovated in 1981, became a registered tangible cultural property in 2016. Inside are Otaguro Motoo’s books, photographs, a gramophone and a Steinway piano made in 1900, which the park says is believed to have been brought from London. A 2023 city article gives the hall’s opening as 9:00–16:00, an hour shorter than the garden; the current official pages give no separate hours.

Getting to Otaguro Park

Ogikubo Station is served by the JR Chuo Line and the Tokyo Metro Marunouchi Line. The official site gives a 10-minute walk from either. The park’s access map shows it south-east of the station, on the South Exit side. There is no car park, and the city asks visitors not to drive.

From Shinjuku, the JR Chuo Line Rapid runs direct to Ogikubo. JR East’s October 2026 timetable has, for example, the 13:17 from Shinjuku reaching Ogikubo at 13:27 on weekdays and at 13:25 on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays, when it does not stop at Koenji or Asagaya.

If you are staying in Tokyo for the light-up, compare Tokyo hotels on Booking.com, and check the journey time to Ogikubo before you book.

When the leaves turn

Suginami City gives the autumn-leaf period, when the light-up is held, as the end of November to early December. The Japan Meteorological Agency’s dates below come from its Tokyo observation site, not from this park.

The Japan Weather Association publishes a forecast for this park on tenki.jp.

For a day in the mountains the same month, see Nikko’s autumn leaves.

The 2026 autumn light-up

The park announced the 2026 dates on 13 October 2026; further details are to be posted on the same page on or after 1 November. This year the light-up is a partner programme of ARTE TOKYO, an arts festival organised by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government and the Executive Committee for the Tokyo International Festival of Arts and Culture.

2025 example, from the city’s press release:

Neither the 2025 release nor the 2026 notice mentions advance booking. The city’s 2024 event page added that entry might be limited when necessary.

An afternoon at Otaguro Park

I took the photos in this post between about 14:38 and 15:02 on 5 December 2025: the low sun lights the ginkgo crowns and throws long shadows across the lawn, and parts of the pond are already in shade. The National Astronomical Observatory of Japan gives Tokyo sunset at 16:28 that day, and at 16:28 or 16:29 on every day of the 2026 light-up.

Rules and facilities

• Toilets, intercom, AED: toilets, including an accessible toilet, and a toilet with a baby bed and baby chair; an intercom and an AED on site (Suginami facility page, updated 9 September 2025).
• Lawns and planting: visitors cannot go onto the lawns or into the planting, and there is no play equipment (2023 city article).
• Tripods: see the light-up section; rules outside that period were not stated on the pages checked.
• Organised shoots: location filming and photo shoots are not permitted during the light-up period and the days around it (Suginami facility page).
• Pets, food and drink: not mentioned on the official pages checked on 18 October 2026. Ask the park office: 03-3398-5814.

Two more gardens nearby

The official access map places two more city gardens south of Otaguro Park. Both are a 15-minute walk from Ogikubo Station and list 9:00–17:00 hours, last entry 16:30. They normally close on Wednesdays and from 29 December to 1 January, although Tekigaiso’s lawn closes only over the New Year. All three gardens open on Wednesday 4, 11, 18 and 25 November and 2 December 2026.

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