Dangerous Jii is seen in a screenshot from the YouTube website, performing one of his Showa job interview sketches.

       TOKYO -- Meet Dangerous Jii -- "Denjii" for short -- an 84-year-old YouTuber who has won a solid following among kids and young people with comical sketches on job interviews in the Showa era (1926-1989), shadow boxing, and even English language education in Japan. But what got him into making videos to start with was something far more dire: his memories of crossing the 38th parallel -- the latitude dividing present day North and South Korea -- at the end of World War II.

       In his guise as a haughty and hard-edged job interviewer of the old school, Denjii looks into the camera at the student "applicant" and intones arrogantly, "Your handwriting is terrible. What kind of upbringing did you have?" and, "Ah, XYZ University...Well, you're not the sharpest knife in the drawer, are you." So goes his "Unbelievable Showa era job interview" video, which has garnered over 3 million views.

       Denjii was himself a corporate employee before he struck out on his own and was self-employed until retiring a few years ago. He says he had no acting experience before launching his YouTube channel(https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCJbWwKqtS577Hj4xFNgiBnQ). So why did he start?

       Two years ago, he stumbled upon a video by an elderly YouTuber who spoke about her own life experiences. Denjii had some of his own life-changing moments. Until age 8, Denjii lived in the northern half of the Korean Peninsula, then a Japanese colony. When World War II ended and Japanese control was collapsing, he and his family fled south across the 38th parallel before being repatriated to Japan. When he told people the story, most would be surprised and deeply interested.

       He mentioned to his 30-something grandchild off-handedly, "If I talk about how I was in North Korea, I might get people to watch me," and they replied, "Well then, let's try it!" It was the push Denjii needed to launch his channel. He bought a video camera and tripod and, in February 2019 -- shortly before his 82nd birthday -- he made his debut as Dangerous Jii, a name inspired by the popular manga series Dangerous Jiisan, which has been running since 2001.

       For his channel's content, he first tried talking normally. "I felt embarrassed and had a lot of trouble looking into the camera," he says. But he managed to put together a 3-minute self-introduction video and uploaded it.

       At first, almost no one watched his channel. It took him more than two weeks to reach 100 views. But he kept at it, turning out new videos. Then, in July 2019, he released what would become his first hit: the Showa-era interviewer.

       The long and winding road of Denjii's life began in 1937. His father, a civil servant, was posted to an area of northern Korea along the Tumang-gang River, near the Chinese border. There Denjii lived until he was 8 years old.

       A road to the 38th parallel dividing North and South Korea is seen in 1966. (Mainichi)

       After the family's dash to the south at the end of the war, they returned to Japan and lived in Tokyo and Hyogo Prefecture. During his high school days, Denjii got into boxing, and even won the Kansai area championship. As a young man, he joined a company, got married and had three children -- a girl and two boys. He became self-employed before he turned 50, doing work including administering apartment buildings, and retired at age 78.

       And all of this has gone into the on-screen persona of the "Dangerous granddad."

       In May 2020, he uploaded a video about his family's desperate escape in 1945. One day, an air raid siren wailed out across the young Denjii's area, and he, his mother and elder brother ran for the air raid shelter with just the clothes on their backs. U.S. bombers arrived overhead, and kept on coming. The bombing seemed endless, and the shelter filled up with ever more Japanese people fleeing the destruction. Eventually, there were so many people crammed into the space that Denjii and his family were forced to move to another shelter, which also eventually became full.

       Thus they began their journey south, getting farther and farther away from home. The air attacks were merciless in the daytime, so they waited in forests for the sun to set, and then set out on pitch-dark country roads. One day, two Soviet soldiers toting submachineguns came into the shed they were hiding in. The soldiers took their watches and all their valuables. It was around Aug. 20, and the men also told them, "Japan has lost the war." It was the first they had heard of it.

       At the time, the Soviets had occupied the north of the Korean Peninsula up to the 38th parallel, and U.S. forces everything south of that. One could not cross from one zone to the other at will. And so mother and sons spent about six months living in a building in what resembled an internment camp just north of the new border. At night, Soviet soldiers would open the door and call in, "Are there any women in here?" The women in the camp would cut their hair short, wear boyish clothes and hide in closets to avoid the soldiers' attention. However, Denjii says the soldiers take away some of the women, who were later found dead.

       In this undated file photo, civilians are seen on a U.S. military landing craft after being picked up south of the 38th parallel dividing what is now North and South Korea, at the port of Moji, Fukuoka Prefecture. (Mainichi)

       The Japanese people in the camp would talk every night about how they could get across the 38th parallel to U.S.-occupied territory. There was almost no food save sorghum grain, and people were dying of malnutrition and even from swarms of lice. The dead were wrapped up, fastened to logs and carried to a nearby mountain to be buried.

       Just before dawn one day, Denjii's family won the cooperation of a local, who put them on a small fishing boat, which could carry less than 10 people, and set off as though it were going fishing. The Soviet guards approached them almost immediately and boarded the boat. The family gave them whatever valuables they still had and, Denjii says, the Soviets subtly signaled for them to go on. The family was then over the border.

       After that, they got passage on a U.S. ship, and landed at the port of Hakata in Fukuoka Prefecture. While they were on the ship, they made onigiri rice balls with soy sauce and white rice, something they'd rarely managed to get while in Korea. Denjii says, "It felt like we'd come home. Getting across the 38th parallel was like a new dawn. We barely made it home alive."

       But Denjii's videos don't focus just on the harrowing experiences of the war years. He also plays on his student boxing days, and a 2-minute video he uploaded at age 82 titled "Jii's serious shadow boxing" in Japanese scored some 180,000 views. Comments on the scenes of his quick punches included, "I want to become a grandpa that's this active. Respect," and "Those don't look like the moves of an 82-year-old."

       Denjii has uploaded about 130 videos in his two years and a bit on the YouTube platform, and he has more than 76,000 subscribers. The videos are fun and energetic, but sometimes quiet and contemplative as well. The content varies, but he says the one thing common to all of them is that he tries to put himself in his viewers' shoes.

       His talks about the war and its aftermath are intended to communicate the incomparable value of peace. His employment interview skits end with words of encouragement for young people worried about their own hunts for good jobs.

       "I'm happy if I can entertain people, even just a little bit," he says. "And thinking about themes for the videos really gets my brain working." He added, "No matter the senior citizen, they have all kinds of experiences. No matter the person, I think they have something to tell the next generation. I think YouTube is a good way to do that."

       So, what does a senior need to get on YouTube?

       The essentials are a camera or smartphone, video recording software, a microphone, and a tripod. Denjii says that if you have these, watching free "Creator Academy" videos on YouTube will also help, as they tell complete beginners how to get started and the tricks for getting better.

       "Once you've done your preparation, you have to find something to talk about," Denjii says. "Don't overthink it. I'd say it's good to start with personal stories you'd want to tell your friends, or specific skills you want to teach people. The important thing is to get that first video up. That way you'll be able to see how you can improve your filming technique or the way you speak. When I started, I was so shy I couldn't look into the camera. But I got used to it. Don't worry about your views. Just improve at your own pace."

       (Japanese original by Makiko Osako, Digital News Center)

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