116-Year-Old Japanese Woman Honored As The World’s Oldest Living Person By Guinness World Records

116-Year-Old Japanese Woman Honored As The World’s Oldest Living Person By Guinness World Records

A 116-year-old Japanese woman who loves playing the board game
Othello has been honored as the world’s oldest living person by Guinness
World Records

The global authority on records officially recognized Kane Tanaka
in a ceremony at the nursing home where she lives in Fukuoka, in
Japan’s southwest. Her family and the mayor were present to celebrate.
 

Tanaka was born Jan. 2, 1903, the seventh among eight children. She
married Hideo Tanaka in 1922, and they had four children and adopted
another child. She is usually up by 6 a.m. and enjoys studying
mathematics.

The previous oldest living person was another Japanese woman, Chiyo
Miyako, who died in July at age 117. The oldest person prior to Miyako
was also Japanese. Japanese tend to exhibit longevity and dominate the
oldest-person list. Although changing dietary habits mean obesity has
been rising, it’s still relatively rare in a nation whose culinary
tradition focuses on fish, rice, vegetables and other food low in fat.
Age is also traditionally respected here, meaning people stay active and
feel useful into their 80s and beyond.
 

But Tanaka has a ways to go before she is the oldest person ever, an
achievement of a French woman, Jeanne Louise Calment, who lived to 122
years, according to Guinness World Records.
 

Guinness said the world’s oldest man is still under investigation
after the man who had the honors, Masazo Nonaka, living on Japan’s
northernmost island of Hokkaido, died in January at 113.