Hi Jim,
I am a Flight Dispatcher at Northwest in Minneapolis, and I did the flight planning for our flt NW 19 MSP-NRT, which would have been on pretty much the same routing as your wife out of ORD. We too routed over YWG, the Pas, Whitehorse, Fairbanks to Nome, then down between Russia and Alaska to join the R220 airway on the North Pacific route structure. We did not need to fly over Russia even though we often have to because of headwinds. I did not see any flights ORD-NRT routing over Russia either, so I presume JAL flew the same route as NW 19.
Merry Xmas.