When I first arrived in Japan amid the bubble era one of the things that struck me most was the ubiquitous presence of kangaroos adorning mostly car spare tire covers on the back of 4WD vehicles. They were an unexpected sign of Australia at a time when the world seemed much larger.
For the almost four decades since, my image of Jaos Corporation, the company that used the roo as its trademark, had forever been associated in my mind with Japanese companies using a marsupial logo.
Turns out that Jaos has been the source of lots of false memories. In a play on the phrase immortalized by the 1997 Australian comedy The Castle (“Jousting sticks? Tell ‘im he’s dreaming.”), I find myself in a situation of: Jaos sticks? Tell ‘im he’s dreaming. Jaos has stuck in my mind, but not as I’d expected.
On the good side, Jaos confirms that its tire covers and mudguards with a kangaroo logo were, indeed, hot items when the Japanese economy was overheating in the late ’80s to early ’90s, which is precisely as I had recalled.
But my memory of Jaos being an acronym of “Japan Australia Offroad Service” (and thus driving the kangaroo logo) is false, according to the history on the company website, which points out that the company name is an abbreviation of Japan Offroad Service. (And, because it’s an abbreviation and not an acronym, I’m putting the company in sentence form instead of its all capitalized preference <except for the post title, which is because that’s how it will be recognized>). (There’s a website on Jaos history that supports my claim, but the official Jaos page makes no mention of the Australian connection in its company name.)
Moreover, I have had that acronym in my mind for years because I was sure I had written about this company before, and even had vague memories of uploading a photo. But I can find no such evidence, anywhere. Not even within this site, which I find amazing considering how much I have strived over the years to focus on precisely these kinds of links. It’s a little disconcerting, to be honest.
Anyway, Jaos was established in Tokyo in 1985 as an importer of parts for recreational vehicles. It started importing roobars from TMJ Caboolture in Queensland in 1987, and it was this Australian link that prompted Jaos to adopt the kangaroo as its company logo. That, and as the company website adds, because the kangaroo is incapable of moving backwards and can only always travel in a forward motion, thus must always be moving ahead.
Jaos stopped using the kangaroo as its logo over a decade ago, but retains the marsupial as its company mascot and uses it to decorate some of its products, notably mudguards. It has transformed itself from a niche parts importer into a producer of sports utility vehicles. But quietly dropped the kangaroo on the way to making that transformation.
It seems Jaos rode the early 4WD/RV boom. Their mudguards, bull bars and stickered accessories featuring kangaroos were widely fitted to vehicles, making the marsupial motif visually common across private 4×4 cars. Jaos released high-visibility product lines early, like the Jaos bull bar and tire cover, and sponsored demo cars and events, which boosted exposure.
Since then, the market has changed to have different styling tastes and subtler branding. Jaos also targets a wider clientele with a much broader product line-up. What’s more, stricter regulations have constrained vehicle modifications, all of which served to shove the roo in its pouch, so to speak.
Jaos, then, seems to be in a healthy state sans kangaroo. Kangaeroo, though, might be an entirely different manner given the flawed state of my memory of past macropods.
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