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Cool, Non-Pointy High-Speed Train Design: Tokyo's Narita Express, by Industrial Designer Kenji Ekuan

Incredibly, he designed it in his 70s

By Rain Noe - December 11, 2019

in Trains | Transportation | Object Culture

The last time I visited Japan (over a decade ago) the Narita Express, the high speed train that whisks you from the airport to Tokyo, looked like this:

However, it's since received a pretty sick re-design by industrial designer Kenji Ekuan, who famously designed the original Kikkoman soy sauce bottle:

The futuristic-looking train made its debut in 2009--which means Ekuan, who was born in 1929, designed it in his seventies. Talk about staying sharp in your old age!

Sadly Ekuan, a former trustee of Art Center, passed away in 2015 at the age of 85. His design firm, the GK Design Group, lives on.

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Sean Horita

5 years ago

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One would think that you couldn't mistake this train for anything else. Yet my father and I got on the train just before the NEX pulled in, thinking it was also going to Narita. That took some scrambling but we figured it out eventually, and of course the employees were nice and forgiving...

Another nice thing I noticed about NEX are the info screens inside the train. They look to be a very high-resolution, full color and backlit e-ink display, which would seem to make sense for a display that did not require a high refresh rate.

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John Thomas

5 years ago

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I was stationed there in the 70’s. The local trains sure didn’t look like that, beautiful, super improvement.

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Marc Sicard

5 years ago

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Discovered Kenji Ekuan through this article, very cool ! On epoint though : this is not a high-speed train as it tops out at 130km/H, or 80 mph ...

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