A second airport for the capital, east of the city in Chiba, 1965–1978.

Narita began life under a different name. Wikipedia says the airport was originally called New Tokyo International Airport (Shin Tōkyō Kokusai Kūkō) and that it lies about 60 kilometres east of central Tokyo in the city of Narita, in Chiba Prefecture. It was planned to relieve Haneda, Tokyo’s older airport on the bay, which the same article says was short of capacity by the early 1960s, as jet aircraft became common.

The organisation came before the buildings. Japanese Wikipedia says the law creating the New Tokyo International Airport Authority (Shin Tōkyō Kokusai Kūkō Kōdan) was passed on 1 June 1965, and that body built and ran the new airport for almost four decades. Its English abbreviation, NAA, is the one the airport’s operator still uses today.

The terminal went up years before the opening. English Wikipedia says the Takenaka Corporation constructed the original terminal building, which was completed in 1972, and that the airport finally opened on 20 May 1978, with a single long runway. That building is today’s Terminal 1, with a North Wing, a Central Building and a South Wing.

The airlines followed the change of airport. Wikipedia says Japan Airlines moved its main international hub from Haneda to Narita, and that All Nippon Airways began scheduled international flights from Narita, to Guam, in 1986. Wikipedia says the airport was popularly called Narita from the day it opened, even though its official name stayed New Tokyo International Airport until 2004.

A second terminal, a new company and an old abbreviation.

The airport grew northwards in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Wikipedia says work on Phase II, a new terminal and runway north of the original main runway, began on 26 November 1986, and that Terminal 2 opened in 1992, laid out as a main building and a satellite, both designed around linear concourses. The two halves were originally joined by a cable-driven shuttle designed by Japan Otis Elevator; Wikipedia says a new walkway between them opened on 27 September 2013 and the shuttle was retired. The South Wing of Terminal 1 opened in June 2006 for Star Alliance carriers, while Terminal 2 has served the Oneworld airlines since 2010 and the North Wing of Terminal 1 has served SkyTeam since 2007.

The legal identity changed in 2004. Wikipedia says a Narita International Airport Corporation Act was passed in 2003, and that on 1 April 2004 New Tokyo International Airport was officially renamed Narita International Airport, reflecting the name people had used since it opened, with control passing from the government authority to the new Narita International Airport Corporation. Japanese Wikipedia adds that the corporation is a special company created under that act, that it took over the business, assets and liabilities of the old authority, that its shares are held by the Japanese government through the Minister of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism and the Minister of Finance, and that the abbreviation NAA was kept unchanged from the authority’s English name. The company’s head office is on the airport grounds.

The third terminal was designed around low-cost travel. Wikipedia says Terminal 3, built for low-cost carriers, opened on 8 April 2015 about 500 metres north of Terminal 2, on a site once occupied by a cargo building, and that it used cost-cutting measures such as decals instead of lighted directional signs and outdoor gates with airstairs instead of jet bridges; the Taisei Corporation was awarded the construction contract in January 2013.

Japanese Wikipedia describes how the look of that terminal was produced. It says a “Terminal3 project” brought together the architects Nikken Sekkei, in a joint venture with Azusa Sekkei, Ryohin Keikaku, the company behind MUJI, and the creative company PARTY, working closely from the production stage so that the building, the signage and the furniture would not be designed separately, and that the creative director Naoki Ito took part in the design. AdverTimes reported on 30 May 2011 that PARTY had been founded by five creatives, among them Ito as chief creative officer and Morihiro Harano as chief executive, as a creative lab working beyond advertising in products, services, platforms, environments and entertainment, with offices in Tokyo’s Daikanyama and in New York.

A gateway known by its city, run by a company that kept the old initials.

For most travellers, an airport’s brand is not its logo but its signs. The mark on a press release or a website matters to the operator, yet the identity people actually use is the wayfinding: the panels that tell them where check-in is, which way the gates lie and how to reach the train. Pictograms do much of that work, standing in for words so that a symbol for baggage, a toilet or a taxi can be read whatever language a passenger speaks. Many airports separate kinds of information by colour, with one scheme for departures, another for arrivals and another for services, while others keep their signs deliberately neutral so that they stand apart from the shops and advertising around them. Where a country or region uses more than one language, or serves travellers from many places, signs often carry two languages or more than one script, and the typography has to hold them together on a single panel.

The name itself can split in two. An airport is usually known by its place name, while the company that runs it may have a different legal or trading name, and the two marks can appear side by side or one can quietly replace the other. Terminal architecture adds a third layer: a roof line, a hall or a building that passengers remember often does more to fix an airport in the mind than any graphic device. Above all of this sit the three-letter codes printed on boarding passes and baggage tags, which many airports now use as a short name in their own communications.

Blue to leave, red to arrive: a floor that does the signposting.

Much of Terminal 3’s identity sits on the floor. Travel Watch, in a preview published on 8 April 2015, explained that the terminal’s second floor gathers the departure and arrival lobbies for both domestic and international flights before security, so that everyone leaving, arriving, seeing people off or meeting them shares a single level. To keep those flows apart, the routes were marked with colour-coded lanes modelled on an athletics track: departing passengers follow the blue line, and arriving passengers follow the red line. Japanese Wikipedia describes the lanes as rubber-chip track surfaces in blue for departures and red-brown for arrivals, and says the floor guidance was introduced because both groups pass through the same floor.

The idea continues outside the building. The same Travel Watch report said the connecting walkway from Terminal 2 is also paved to resemble a running track, with the distance between the two terminals shown and rest areas placed along the route.

The opening turned the track into a ceremony. In a second report on 8 April 2015, Travel Watch said the terminal opened at 3:30 in the morning and that the airport’s mascot, Kuutan, ran along the track with passengers and broke a finishing tape to mark the start of service, as the low-cost carriers moved across from Terminal 2.

The furniture belongs to the same plain language. Fashionsnap reported on 7 April 2015 that the terminal uses MUJI sofa benches based on its legged mattress, developed around the idea of comfort for travellers facing long waits at airports, with solid oak tables and chairs in the food court; the benches were meant for working on a laptop, reading or lying down, and a version adapted for general sale was to be sold in MUJI stores.

The names tell the rest of the story: the law of 2004 made the everyday name Narita official, and the operator kept the initials NAA from the authority that came before it.

For a design guide, Narita Airport shows how a low-budget terminal can turn wayfinding into its main visual idea, using coloured running lanes on the floor in place of lit signs and pairing them with plain furniture. Compare Japan Airlines, which moved its main international hub to Narita, and ANA, whose Star Alliance partners share Terminal 1’s South Wing. For this guide we use departure blue, arrival brick and concrete with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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