Video: Dancing ‘old heart-throbs’ become TikTok sensation in Japan

Showing off their awkward moves in shirts, ties and brightly coloured belly warmers, four men in their 50s and 60s have become Japan’s latest TikTok sensation.

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 colours — 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 revitalise our ageing countryside community, which is suffering from population decline with fewer and fewer children,” he said.

“I have a peaceful smile, for the first time in a long while,” said another.