In 1995 Japanese Domestic carrier JAS teamed up with Akira Kurosawa, one of the most influential filmmakers in the history of cinema. The director of Seven Samourai was also a designer and he created 7 different designs for JAS with the original themes being “Japanese morning” and “7 rainbow colors over the skies of Japan”.
The schemes were strictly symetrical and adorned all 16 brand new MD90 of the airline. The first seven aircraft became the "Seven Samourai" while from the 8th delivery, aircraft would again wear the first design and so on, becoming some kind of Shadow Warriors (the name of another Kurosawa movie).
Although this aircraft was rigorously the third registered with the airline (on December 19, 1995), it was the first to arrive at Haneda on January 9, 1996. Note the JAS titles were really mirrored on the starboard side, resulting in letters being in the wrong direction!
Kurosawa died in 1998 and in honour of the artist, people asked for the aircraft to retain the liveries after the JAL-JAS merger, however for corporate image reasons, all aircraft finally got repainted in JAL's Arc of the Sun livery in the mid-2000s.
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