page_title: Japan Airlines
section_title: Logo and basic liveries
hierarchical_section_title: Japan Airlines / Corporate affairs and identity / Livery / Logo and basic liveries
caption_attribution_description: en:Japan Airlines en:MD-81 JA8554
context_page_description: Japan Airlines Co., Ltd., also known as Nikkō, is an international airline and Japan's flag carrier, headquartered in Shinagawa, Tokyo. Its main hubs are Tokyo's Narita International Airport and Tokyo International Airport, as well as Osaka's Kansai International Airport and Osaka International Airport. JAL group companies include Japan Airlines, J-Air, Japan Air Commuter, Japan Transocean Air, and Ryukyu Air Commuter for domestic feeder services, and JAL Cargo for cargo and mail services.
  JAL group operations include scheduled and unscheduled international and domestic passenger and cargo services to 220 destinations in 35 countries worldwide, including codeshares. The group has a fleet of 279 aircraft. In the fiscal year ended 31 March 2009, the airline group carried over 52 million passengers and over 1.1 million tons of cargo and mail. Japan Airlines, J-Air, JAL Express, and Japan Transocean Air are members of the Oneworld airline alliance network.
  JAL was established in 1951 and became the national airline of Japan in 1953. After over three decades of service and expansion, the airline was fully privatised in 1987.
context_section_description: The JAL livery is called the tsurumaru (鶴丸) or "crane circle." It is an image of a Japanese red-crown crane with its wings extended in full flight. The Tsurumaru JAL logo was created in 1958 by Jerry Huff, the creative director at Botsford, Constantine and Gardner of San Francisco, which had been the advertising agency for Japan Airlines from its earliest days. JAL had used several logos up until 1958. When the airline arranged to buy new Douglas DC-8s, it decided to create a new official logo for the inauguration of its jet service worldwide.
  In the creation of the logo, Huff was inspired by the personal crests of Samurai families. In a book he'd been given, We Japanese, he found pages of crests, including the crane. On his choice of the crane, he writes: "I had faith that it was the perfect symbol for Japan Air Lines. I found that the Crane myth was all positive—it mates for life (loyalty), and flies high for miles without tiring (strength.)"
  The tsurumaru livery was in use until 2002, when it was replaced by a livery called the "Arc of the Sun." The livery featured the motif of a rising sun on a creamy parchment-colored background.
  JAL is a strong supporter of UNICEF and expresses its support by having a "We Support UNICEF" logo on each aircraft.
  Following its corporate restructuring, Japan Airlines returned to the classic tsurumaru logo starting on 1 April 2011. A Boeing 767-300 was the last remaining aircraft that had the "Arc of the Sun" livery until it was retired in January 2016.
caption: A Japan Airlines McDonnell-Douglas MD-81 in the former "Arc of the Sun" livery and with a Unicef logo
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