117-year-old woman becomes Japan’s oldest ever person

Kane Tanaka is now officially the third oldest person of all time

Credit: Newscom/Alamy Live News 

A 117-year-old woman with a soft spot for Coca-Cola has become Japan’s oldest ever citizen, as the east Asian nation marks a public holiday today  to celebrate its elderly.

Kane Tanaka is the world’s oldest living person, a feat she achieved last March. Last Saturday, she set the all-time record for oldest Japanese citizen at 117 years and 261 days old.

The supercentenarian lives in a nursing home in Fukuoka in south-western Japan. Due to coronavirus restrictions, she was unable to celebrate the landmark with her family.

Instead, she chose to mark the occasion with a bottle of Coca-Cola, her favourite drink, and was photographed wearing a T-shirt with her own face on it, which was given to her by her family.

Ms Tanaka reportedly celebrated with a bottle of coke

Credit: /Avalon.red /Newscom

Her grandson Eiji Tanaka, 60, told Kyodo News Agency: “Even amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, my grandmother is well and looks to be enjoying her life every day. As a family, we are happy and proud of the new record.”

Ms Tanaka was born January 2, 1903, the seventh of nine children. She was born the same year the Ford motor company and the Tour de France were created. 

While Ms Tanaka’s age is remarkable, it is also seen as indicative of Japan’s rapidly ageing population. Newly released government figures show that 36.2 million people in Japan are over the age of 65. Of those, 80,450 are over 100 years old.

Japan’s centenarians

According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs, over-64s now constitute 28.7 per cent of the population, with that proportion expected to increase 35 per cent by 2040, according to the National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

The number of centenarians has risen above 80,000 for the first time. Eighty-eight per cent of those over the age of 100 are women. The alarming ageing of Japan’s population is highlighted by the fact that, in 1963, only 153 people were aged 100 or older.

Ms Tanaka is now the third oldest person of all time, although she has some way to go to take the title. Jeanne Calment, a French woman, holds the record after she passed away in 1997 at the age of 122.