People exiting Tokyo Station this past Sunday may have witnessed a free show they didn’t expect. An older Japanese gentleman in a gray suit, navy blue cap, and white shoes slid, hopped, and even took a few floor dives on the paved square across from the Marunouchi exits. The man’s face beamed from ear to ear as three visitors who’d come to Tokyo Station expressly to meet “the legend” cheered him on.
Likely, there are many in Japan who’d find this scene embarrassing. Utsumi Tohru doesn’t care.
“Japanese people will think it’s fine if you’re good but embarrassing if you’re awful at it,” he says about dancing in public. “That’s naturally the way Japanese people think. I don’t. Even if it’s embarrassing, what’s important is that I’m enjoying myself.”
It’s that attitude that’s led Tohru – or “Uncle Tohru” as he’s known by his legion of fans worldwide – to garner an astounding 311K followers on Instagram and around 225K on TikTok. I met Tohru at Tokyo Station to ask him what inspired him to start dancing, what his colleagues think about his online fame, and whether he’s ever considered quitting his day job.
A lifelong love for dancing becomes an online sensation
By day, Tohru, a native of Fukuoka Prefecture, is a management consultant with a wife and a now 21-year-old child. On the weekends and whenever he has spare time, however, he’s out at locations like Tokyo Station, putting on the moves and recording content to upload to his accounts.
“I started going to dance classes about six, seven years ago,” he said. Before then, he’d dance whenever he could at clubs. “I got to thinking about what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.” That led him to take up formal instruction.
Tohru started his TikTok soon after that, and his Instagram account three or four years ago. His aim wasn’t fame, though, or to send any sort of message. He just wanted to get better at dancing. He feels output is key.
“For me, when I do consulting, or reading, I can’t learn just by input, I need to have output. The same with dancing – even if it’s bad, by creating output, I’ll get better.”
In other words, Tohru never intended to “go viral” or become an international sensation. Sometime around June 2024, however, his accounts took off, thanks in large part to a video of him dancing in a suit and tie to “We Still Don’t Trust You Future” by Metro Boomin. The post racked up over half a million likes on IG.
These days, users send Tohru song requests, which the amateur dancer loves to fulfill. The result is that his videos span a large sonic gamut. Recent dances include “Hit ‘Em Up” by 2pac, “Zenzenzense” by Radwimps (from the movie Your Name by director Shinkai Makoto), and “Estos Celos” by Vincente Fernandez. Tohru keeps up his individual activity while also participating in the group O’jeys (“Oyajis,” a Japanese slang word for middle-aged men), a six-member dance unit whose average age is 59.
Japan vs. the world
Tohru’s fan base is largely comprised of people overseas who love watching an older Japanese man getting his groove on and pushing his boundaries at age 58. What do his co-workers think of his hobby, though?
“They mostly think, ‘That’s just Tohru,'” he shrugged, further demonstrating his lack of concern for what others might think or feel about his hobby.
Tohru speaks hardly any English (we conversed solely in Japanese). That can lead to some awkward situations with his fans overseas. For instance, fans took “Uncle” to task recently for a series of photos in which he wore a red cap and a t-shirt featuring a 2014 X (then Twitter) post from rapper XXXTentacion that read, “if you don’t like kanye I don’t like you.” Such a shirt would be highly controversial in the United States due to West’s unhinged behavior in the past few years, which includes outright antisemitism.
When I bring this up, Tohru sighs, explaining the t-shirt maker is “a young entrepreneur I wanted to support” and that the maker was using Kanye as a motif since he thought it could generate buzz in Japan. He says that the red hat that the entrepreneur asked him to wear in the pics was actually a MAGA (Make America Great Again) hat. However, Tohru blotted out the MAGA text before he uploaded them.
“Personally, I hate Trump,” he confided.
Given that Kanye’s antics have had little coverage in the Japanese press, and that Tohru’s sole language is Japanese, it’s not surprising that he was unaware of any controversy.
His fans don’t seem to hold it against him. “Don’t be hard on him he doesn’t know what kanye does in his free time,” one wrote.
No plans to go pro
Overall, Tohru comes off as an authentic and sweet man – someone who’s doing what he loves while he can and enjoying every minute of it. He seems to appreciate the joy that his joy brings others.
Tohru travels a lot across Japan for work. That means there are days he doesn’t have time or opportunity to dance. “It is what it is,” he said. “I dance when I have time. I take a pragmatic approach to it.”
He doesn’t intend to quit his day job any time soon, though, even if it does give him less time for dancing. He loves what he does as a management consultant.
“You build up relationships over a period of many years,” he says. “I love watching our customers’ businesses grow and helping employees learn to grow in their jobs.
“I love growing personally through dance as well. They’re both fun. It’s not about picking one or the other.”
That attitude came out after our interview, when Tohru met three visitors from Hawaii who’d come to dance with him. When he initially told me about this meeting, I assumed he was meeting three other famous Instagram or TIkTok dancers. However, the three turned out to be just big fans who asked Tohru if they could dance with him.
“We can’t really dance,” one admitted. “We came to see the master in action.” None of the three could speak Japanese, either, leading me to fall into the role of interpreter.
Tohru didn’t mind any of this. He set out his speaker, let them connect via Bluetooth, and started pumping out tunes as the four of them danced together for around half an hour. At the end, his visitors gave him the most Hawaiian gift possible: A Hawaiian shirt.
I wondered how the four would have communicated if I hadn’t been on hand to translate. They might have resorted to translation apps, most likely. Honestly, though, I think Tohru would have gotten on just fine without an app.
“Even if we can’t communicate through language,” he said, “we can communicate through dance.”
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