 JAS held a public competition for its 25th anniversary celebrations in 1996 with the aim to find a unique livery for its brand new 777s; it is to be noted as well that Boeing was not really happy with the idea of painting its latest plane in the standard original JAS livery, which was directly derived from Airbus' house livery.
More than 10,000 schemes were submitted (including some online, a first at the time), and 13-year old Masatomo Watanabe from Chitose (near Sapporo Airport) was chosen as the winner by a jury including film director Akira Kurosawa. The rainbow started on the nose and ended on the tail, resulting in an asymetrical design. The first 777 for the airline (JA8977) was transferred to the Japanese register in December 1996 and landed at Haneda on January 28, 1997.
JAS and JAL announced their merger in late 2001 and small JAL stickers were added on all JAS planes in 2002, when the new JAL Arc of the Sun livery was unveiled. JAS became JAL Domestic on April 1st, 2004 and a few of these Rainbow liveries outlived JAS, yet mostly in faded condition.
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