How Japan's railways stayed one while splitting apart

Japan's railways were privatized in 1987, splitting the state-run Japanese National Railways into seven independent companies under the new "JR Group" umbrella. To maintain institutional continuity despite the split, designers created a unified corporate identity and logo that all companies would share, a decision that also established the "J" prefix convention now used across many Japanese institutions. The JR mark has remained virtually unchanged for nearly 40 years, making the fragmented system appear as a single, cohesive national railway network.