Why Tokyo Haneda has the cleanest airport toilets in the world

If you have ever been to Tokyo Haneda, you know the feeling: you walk into the men’s room braced for an airport toilet, and it’s cleaner than your kitchen.

Eleven years at the top

In the 2026 Skytrax World Airport Awards, Haneda was named the World’s Cleanest Airport for the 11th year in a row. In the same awards it came third for the world’s best airport washrooms, alongside first place for best domestic airport and for accessible facilities.

The cleaner who was told she lacked kindness

Much of the credit goes to a cleaning culture built by people like Haruko Niitsu, of Japan Airport Techno, who joined in 1995. In 1997 she won the All-Japan Building Cleaning Competition, the youngest winner at the time. She had come second in the Tokyo round first, and was told her cleaning lacked “kindness”: thought for the person who uses the room next. Two months later she won the final.

She is now her company’s only “Environmental Meister” and spends most of her time training others. Her methods, as described by the Tokyo government, include checking the underside of toilets with a tablet camera, carrying the mop in front of her body and wiping walls sideways so she can see who is passing.

That idea, cleaning for the next person, is the whole of urinal etiquette in one sentence.

The Tokyo Toilet

Thirty minutes from the airport, Shibuya has turned public toilets into architecture. The Tokyo Toilet project, unveiled in 2020 by the Nippon Foundation with Shibuya Ward, rebuilt 17 public toilets with 16 designers including Tadao Ando, Kengo Kuma, Toyo Ito and Shigeru Ban.

Ban’s two toilets are the famous ones: brightly coloured transparent glass boxes. From outside you can see whether one is clean and empty. Lock the door and the glass turns opaque.

Perfect Days

The project even produced a film. Its backers invited Wim Wenders to make something about Tokyo’s public toilets and the people who clean them. The result, Perfect Days (2023), follows Hirayama, a toilet cleaner, through his quiet routine. Koji Yakusho won Best Actor at Cannes for the role, and the film was nominated for the Oscar for best international feature.

Wenders called the toilets “small sanctuaries of peace and dignity”. Haneda’s cleaners would agree.

Haneda in the game

Haneda is one of the Asian airports in Urinal Rules Forever. The restroom is spotless. The men in it are the same as everywhere else. Learn the rules before you land.