TOKYO —
Showing off their awkward moves in shirts, ties, and brightly colored belly
warmers, four men in their 50s and 60s have become Japan’s latest
TikTok sensation.
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The group’s
mission? To promote their small countryside town, whose population is in
decline, through dance routines to pop tunes that fans call “adorable”.
Since their first
post in February, the videos, filmed in choice locations from playgrounds and
shrines to municipal buildings, have been viewed more than 16 million times.
The four call
themselves “ojiqun” — a slang word used by young people that mixes “ojisan”,
which means “old men” in Japanese, and “kyun”, meaning “heart-throb”.
They wear suit
trousers, smart shoes, and belly-warmer bands in different colors — blue,
green, yellow, and red — and keep a straight face even when they struggle to
stay in time.
One of the members,
52-year-old Takumi Shirase, runs an IT firm and a gardening company when not on
TikTok.
He told AFP he had
created ojiqun with three friends to try and put the rural town of Wake, in
western
Japan’s Okayama region, back on the map.
“We wanted to come
up with something that would revitalize our ageing countryside community, which
is suffering from population decline with fewer and fewer children,” he said.
Wake currently has
around 14,000 residents, and Shirase said his old primary school has closed due
to lack of demand.
A local shopping
mall has also disappeared, while some annual festivals are no longer held in
the town.
But with more than
34,000
TikTok followers, “we hope to encourage people to come to Wake, either
as tourists or as new residents,” Shirase said.
Ojiqun’s latest
post, “centipede dance”, shows the four men doing a goofy Madness-style walk in
single file in front of a concrete building to a rendition of “House of Fun”.
Fans have peppered
the comments under each video with heart symbols, calling them “splendid” and
“adorable”.
“I laughed again
and again,” said one recent comment.
“I have a peaceful
smile, for the first time in a long while,” said another.
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