BY KENNETH MAXWELL AND YOSHIO TAKAHASHI

TOKYO—The in-house laundry service at Japan Airlines Co. still presses the cabin crews' uniforms, but not their white shirts. Crew members now take care of that themselves. And JAL's mechanics at Haneda Airport reuse their lunch bags to carry small aircraft parts, saving the company 7 to 11 yen per bag, or about a dime.

"We were able to reduce costs by 60 million yen [about $750,000] last year at this hangar," says Shinichi Shimotori, a 26-year JAL veteran aircraft mechanic.

The yen-pinching culture shift at the country's proud, once profligate national airline—part of a formal program called "JAL Philosophy"—is ...