The world’s oldest person, Japanese woman Tomiko Itoka, has died at the age of 116, officials in the southern Japanese city of Ajiya said on Monday.
Itoka, who had four children and five grandchildren, died on December 29 at a nursing home where she had lived since 2019, the mayor of Ajiya said in a statement.
Born on May 23, 1908, in Osaka, near Ajiya, she was identified as the world’s oldest person after the death of Spaniard Naria Branyas Morera in August 2024 at the age of 117.
Coming from a family of three, she played volleyball in her youth and survived wars, pandemics and technological revolutions.
In her later years, she enjoyed bananas and Kalpis, a popular Japanese milk drink, the city government said in a statement.
According to the Gerontology Research Group, the world’s oldest person is now 116-year-old Brazilian nun Inah Canabaro Lukas, who was born 16 days after Ito, the AP reports.
Japan is facing a demographic crisis as its aging population grows while its declining working-age population finances rising medical and social spending. As of September, Japan had more than 95,000 centenarians, 88 percent of whom are women. Nearly a third of the country’s 124 million people are 65 and older.
