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Rakuten spent the late 2010s trying to turn a Japanese shopping mall into a global brand, and its logo changed twice in two years to keep up. ITmedia's headline captured the pace: a logo renewal for the second year running. In 2017 the group had moved most logos from the Japanese 楽天 to the Latin Rakuten and put a Circle R at the front. On 26 June 2018 it announced another change, effective from 2 July.

The new design adds the Japanese character for one, a single horizontal stroke, beneath the name. Rakuten's release said it symbolised a new start and the group's ambition to take on the next challenge, and was meant to represent a passionate commitment to redefine expectations and reach the next stage of growth. ITmedia reported that the company loaded the stroke with four meanings: a beginning, becoming one, being number one and being unique. Rakuten's brand pages still describe the idea as the spirit of one, with customers, partners and the company working as one team.

The mark was not a surprise to football fans. Rakuten said the design was first shown through its 2017 sponsorship of FC Barcelona and on the shirts of its own teams, Vissel Kobe and the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles, and ITmedia noted it was already on those uniforms. The company said adopting a single logo across all group services would raise brand value worldwide.

A second step followed. In a later release Rakuten said the new logo's simple, sharp design stood for speed, innovation in the face of change, unified services and putting the customer first, and that from 1 October 2018 a new brand symbol containing the same stroke would gradually replace the Circle R across apps, mobile services and other touchpoints. ITmedia added a correction that the Circle R would survive in places such as some app icons and Rakuten Edy. Each service logo also got its own colour, a way to show diversity inside one group.

The one stroke is a lovely idea on paper: a single line that carries meaning in Japanese and pure graphic simplicity everywhere else. In practice it is subtle to the point of disappearing, a line under a wordmark that many viewers outside Japan will read as an underline. The strength of the system is discipline, more than 70 services under one name, rather than the mark itself. Changing logos two years running also weakened the very recognition Rakuten said it wanted.