A suit, a song and millions of views
Toru Utsumi, a Japanese management consultant who returned to dancing at 52, has reached 60 with more than 640,000 Instagram followers, over a million TikTok fans and videos attracting more than 7.5 million views. Known online as Tohru Dance, he performs in shirts, trousers and suits, turning the familiar image of an office worker into something much less predictable.
Contents
His audience sends song requests, watches him move through public spaces and sometimes meets him in Japan to dance. Italian lawyer Roberto Cimmino joined him outside a Tokyo station while visiting the country with his wife. Cimmino described the appeal in simple terms:
Just a little short video of him dancing or vibing can totally change your mood and make you smile.
Utsumi's popularity also contains a surprise. He says his audience is overwhelmingly overseas, while Japanese followers form a minority. Some early comments from Japanese viewers objected to his casual treatment of choreography, the planned sequence of movements in a dance.
Behind the short clips is a longer story about returning to an old interest, taking classes and making room for enjoyment alongside work. Utsumi runs his own consulting business, practices a dance style called locking and belongs to a group whose members have continued dancing into their 70s. His ambition is to keep going until at least 71.
Why he returned to dance at 52
Utsumi grew up in Kyushu, with family roots in Fukuoka Prefecture. His father was a Lutheran minister, and church music formed part of his childhood. Later came a much louder mix: punk, heavy metal and the Eurobeat music he danced to in discos as a teenager.
Dance was therefore familiar when, after turning 50, he began thinking about how much time he had left to try things. He wanted a physical activity and returned to something he had enjoyed when younger. In 2018, aged 52, he began taking dance classes.
Utsumi, explaining his decision to learn properly after years of dancing in discos and clubs, put his approach to age this way:
It's never too late to start dancing, because today is the youngest day of my life.
His return combined familiarity with fresh instruction. He already knew the pleasure of moving to music, but classes gave him a style to practice and skills to develop. The suit and the social media following came to define his public image; the starting point was a personal decision to dance again.
How the audience grew
Utsumi says he began using Instagram around the time he resumed dancing at 52. Public dancing videos are dated to 2023. He saw posting as part of learning: letting people watch created a reason to work harder, even when a video was imperfect.
The milestones show how his activity developed:
- At 40, Utsumi left his company and started his own business.
- In 2018, aged 52, he began dance classes.
- From 2023, he posted videos of dancing in public.
- By July 9, 2025, when he was described as 59, he had more than half a million followers across Instagram and TikTok.
- The latest figures place his following above 640,000 on Instagram and above a million on TikTok.
The newer figures put his combined following above 1.64 million accounts, compared with more than 500,000 in July 2025. People who follow him on both platforms appear in both counts, so the total counts accounts rather than individual viewers.
His most widely watched videos have reached audiences much larger than his follower count. Some have attracted more than 7.5 million views, showing how far an individual performance can travel beyond the people who already follow him.
What is Tohru-style dancing?
Utsumi practices locking, a style in which flowing steps are interrupted by distinct stops or held positions. He describes its rhythm as a few steps followed by a lock. His videos are looser, mixing movements in response to the song rather than always following a fixed routine.
Utsumi calls that approach freestyle, or Tohru-style. He still wants to master locking, even as his public performances take a more playful form. Practicing a particular technique and improvising for a video are both part of his dancing life.
Song requests help determine what viewers see. By July 2025, his spreadsheet contained more than 700 requested songs. He said all the songs he danced to were requests, although the volume of comments had become too large for him to read every one.
Soul and funk, especially music from the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, feel easier to him because they work well with locking. Many requests, however, are for newer hip-hop. Others range from death metal to folk dancing from a region of Italy. His varied musical upbringing gives him something to draw on when an unfamiliar request arrives.
The consultant behind the salaryman image
Utsumi's nickname rests on an instantly recognizable contrast: a man dressed for business moving with the freedom of a dancer. Salaryman is a common term for a salaried company employee in Japan. Utsumi now works independently, having left his company and established his own business at 40.
His management consulting work involves helping organizations change. He describes asking younger people what they actually want to do and encouraging them to pursue it. In his own life, leaving a company and later committing to dance came from a similar willingness to act on his choices.
Utsumi sees a connection between his professional thinking and posting videos. Producing something gives him a chance to learn from it. Rather than waiting until every move is polished, he puts the work in front of people and uses that experience to improve.
He also separates improvement from the pressure simply to keep publishing. Utsumi, discussing why people struggle to sustain an activity, explained his priority:
Continuity isn't the goal. Becoming better is the goal.
That approach gives his videos a purpose beyond attracting attention. A clip can be enjoyable for viewers while also being one more step in a skill he is still learning.
Why some viewers object to his moves
Utsumi says some early Japanese commenters accused him of performing choreography incorrectly or making fun of the dancers who created it. He understood their objection as a concern that a casual performance treated carefully practiced routines disrespectfully.
His own priority is self-expression. He was surprised that viewers could interpret his dancing as mockery when he was enjoying the music. The disagreement concerns what viewers expect from a dance video: faithful execution of an established routine, or a personal response to a song.
Utsumi also says people may worry about their employer's reputation, workplace evaluations and whether public behavior could affect their job. Those concerns help explain why expressing oneself openly can feel difficult to him. His independence as a business owner is part of his own circumstances.
Japan's response to Utsumi has not been measured in a representative survey; the picture comes from his description of his followers and the comments he received. He also dances with other Japanese men and attends classes. His experience includes criticism, companionship and continued practice.
Dancing together without a shared language
Utsumi's overseas audience sometimes becomes a partner on the pavement. He recalls first dancing with a follower from abroad while on a business trip to Kobe. The visitor was shy and spoke limited Japanese, so they relied largely on Google Translate to talk.
Dancing gave them another way to spend time together. Utsumi says the encounter helped him realize they could communicate through movement despite the difficulty of conversation. He has also described dancing with someone from Mexico while they managed with limited Japanese and English.
Cimmino's meeting with him in Tokyo offers another example of that connection. A brief performance on a screen became a shared activity during a visit to Japan. The attraction was the mood Utsumi created, as much as the steps themselves.
Utsumi still feels uncomfortable dancing alone when other people are nearby. He says he sometimes looks for somewhere quieter. His public confidence coexists with that nervousness; enjoying the performance does not mean he feels at ease before every one.
A group that keeps age in perspective
Utsumi belongs to the O'jeys, a group of older men learning locking. In July 2025, he said the group was in its seventh year. Its members ranged from 48 to 71, with an average age of 59. Their instructor had encouraged them to form the group and enter competitions.
The oldest members give his ambition a concrete reference point. Two were 71, and Utsumi said he wanted to keep dancing until at least that age himself. By then, he calculated, those members would be 83, and he would still want to encourage them to continue.
His own practice includes both company and solitude. Dancing with others brings shared enjoyment, while dancing alone lets him respond directly to music. During deep concentration, he says, his thoughts fall away and his body reacts to what he hears.
Utsumi describes that feeling as something that comes from listening closely to music he likes, rather than forcing a particular state of mind. For the consultant whose videos now reach millions, the activity still comes back to a familiar pleasure: hearing a song and moving to it.
Key Points
- Toru Utsumi, 60, is known online as Tohru Dance and Japan's dancing salaryman.
- He has more than 640,000 Instagram followers and over a million TikTok fans.
- He began dance classes at 52 in 2018 and posted public dancing videos from 2023.
- He practices locking, while his videos feature a freer personal style and music requested by viewers.
- Utsumi says most of his audience is overseas and some early Japanese comments criticized his choreography.
- An independent management consultant and member of the O'jeys dance group, he hopes to keep dancing until at least 71.
