TOKYO: Japan’s Maritime Self-Defense Force is taking to YouTube for recruitment efforts amid a shortage of members.

MSDF staff are posting videos on the force’s official YouTube account, seeking to show the duties executed by its members.

“It is an innovative idea that breaks down the SDF’s stiff image, and I hope young people watch it,” a senior MSDF official said.

As of the end of March, only 92 percent of the SDF’s 247,154 posts were filled.

The novel coronavirus epidemic has forced the SDF to cancel events at bases and recruitment activities aimed at young people, such as tours of warships.

The MSDF launched this month the “KanTube” series of YouTube videos, a play on the video platform’s name and “kan,” which means ship. It is branding itself as the first Japanese YouTuber to be a “uniformed civil servant.”

The first video, roughly four minutes long, showed the P-3C patrol aircraft taking off with explanations by pilots.

In another video, members of the public relations office of the Defense Ministry’s Maritime Staff Office acted out the meeting that led to the decision behind the launch of the YouTube series.

The MSDF plans to release further videos, such as one in which a US-2 rescue plane makes a landing on water.

Others in the SDF are also using YouTube videos to reach out to the public.

The Ground SDF’s Middle Army, which covers central and western Japan, has been releasing its own series on YouTube since August. In the humorous videos, GSDF personnel wearing comical masks engage in obstacle-course racing and other activities.

“We can’t win against fighter jets and warships,” a GSDF public relations official said. “We want to express the charms of the GSDF in a way that emphasizes with people.”

The Air SDF, meanwhile, is teaming up with the official YouTube channel using the popular Gachapin mascot character. In one video, Gachapin boards a CH-47J helicopter.

“I hope children come to admire us and think ‘the SDF is cool,'” a senior ASDF official said.

A video featuring Gachapin and the ASDF’s Blue Impulse aerobatic flight team is also being considered.

JIJI Press