Kamato Hongo
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older is expected to reach a record-high 20,561 by the end of September, topping the 20,000 mark for the first time, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said Tuesday (Sept. 9, 2003).
The centenarian population has increased 134 times since the government began compiling the statistics in 1963, and women continue to make up the vast majority of the cohort at 84.6%.
The figure, compiled Sept. 1, increased by 2,627 from last year and doubled since 1998, when it first exceeded the 10,000 mark.
Okinawa has the highest proportion of centenarians among Japan's 47 prefectures, topping the list for the 14th consecutive year since 1990, when surveyors began to compile ratios by prefecture.
The data show a continuing trend in which western Japan has more centenarians than the east.
The average number of centenarians per 100,000 people was 16.13 for the nation as a whole, while for Okinawa Prefecture it was 42.49, followed by Kochi at 39.01 and then Shimane at 35.80. Saitama was at the bottom of the list for the 14th straight year with 7.37.
A 114-year-old woman died in Hiroshima Japan Thursday just two weeks after the Guinness Book of World Records recognized her as the world's oldest living person.
Mitoyo Kawate, who was born on May 15, 1889, in Hiroshima, died from pneumonia at a Hiroshima hospital.
When the Allied Powers dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on Aug. 6, 1945, Kawate was not in the city, but was later exposed to radiation when she returned to search for loved ones.
A daughter of a farmer, Kawate kept farming until she was forced to give it up at the age of 99 due to an arm injury.
Kawate later entered a local home for the aged in October 1993, where she had lived up until recently. Officials at the home said that Kawate had lived an active life, singing songs when she first arrived. But she recently became bed-ridden and caught a cold in late October.
The Guinness Book of World Records clarified that Kawate was the world's oldest woman "whose date of birth can be fully authenticated," following the death of 116-year-old Kamato Hongo in late October and says that the oldest person is now Charlotte Benkner from Ohio.
Benkner, who emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1896, will turn 114 on Nov. 16. After the death of Kawate, Ura Koyama, a 113-year-old woman in Iizuka, Fukuoka Prefecture, is Japan's oldest person.
Kamato Hongo of the city of Kagoshima, who turned 116 Tuesday Sept. 16, 2003, was the oldest person in the country for the fifth straight year. She is followed by Yukichi Chuganji born March 23, 1889, 114, of Ogori, Fukuoka Prefecture, who has been the oldest man in Japan since 2000. Sadly Yukichi Chuganji has past away recently.
Hongo was the world's oldest person and Chuganji the world's oldest man, both recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records.
Hongo, who regularly sleeped for two days in a row and then stayed awake for two whole days, is said to have had a healthy appetite despite the lingering heat in Kagoshima, her family said.
Elderly Okinawans have among the lowest mortality rates in the world from a multitude of chronic diseases of aging and as a result enjoy not only what may be the world's longest life expectancy but the world's longest health expectancy. Centenarians, in particular, have a history of aging slowly and delaying or escaping entirely the chronic diseases of aging including dementia, cardiovascular disease (coronary heart disease and stroke) and cancer. The goal of the Okinawa Centenarian Study (OCS) is to uncover the genetic and lifestyle factors responsible for this remarkable successful aging phenomenon for the betterment of the health and lives of all people.
Japan has the world's highest life expectancy, at 78.07 years for men and 84.93 for women.
According to some estimates, Japan will have roughly one person over 65 for every two of working age by 2025, a higher dependency ratio than any other major industrialised nation.
The rapid ageing of society and a tumbling birthrate have raised concerns that pension obligations may become unmanageable.
This book is a prescriptive progam for optimum health. Written by the lead investigators of the Okinawa Centenrian Study. ISBN: 0-609-60747-2. Written in English. You can read more about the book at The Okinawa Program website.
One of the most important things about the Okinawa Centenarian Study is the fact that it is based on solid evidence. The most important evidence needed for any centenarian study is reliable age-verification data.
In Okinawa, every city, town, and village has a family register system (koseki) that has been recording reliable birth, marriage, and death statistics since 1879. Life tables calculated from this database show one of the world's highest concentrations of centenarians and likely the world's longest life expectancy for any country or state.
Juan Ponce de Leon and James Hilton had it all wrong. The fountain of youth isn't in Florida, where 16th-century Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon went searching for it. And Shangri-la isn't stuck way up in the Himalayas, where Hilton, author of Lost Horizon, placed his fictional paradise, whose inhabitants never aged.
The nearest thing to a real-life refuge from the ravages of old age and death is here on the Japanese island of Okinawa in the East China Sea.
The Japanese live longer than anyone else, and Okinawans live longer than anyone else in Japan. The Japanese government says 457 Okinawans are at least 100 years old 34.7 centenarians for every 100,000 islanders, highest ratio in the world. The USA has about 10 centenarians for every 100,000 people. Life expectancy is 81.2 years on Okinawa, longest in the world. New figures show that the average Okinawan woman lives to 86 and the average man to 78.
Okinawans don't just live longer, they live better. According to recent studies, the elderly here appear to have far lower rates of dementia than their U.S. counterparts and suffer less than half the risk for hip fractures. Some Okinawan centenarians even claim they are still having sex. Researchers aren't so sure about that. But Okinawan elders clearly do things other old folks can't. Martial artist Seikichi Uehara was 96 when he defeated a thirtysomething ex-boxing champion in a nationally televised match two years ago, later explaining that his opponent "had not yet matured enough to beat me." Nabi Kinjo became a local legend when she hunted down a poisonous snake and killed it with a fly swatter. She was 105.
The rest of the world is at last beginning to learn about this phenomenon. The Okinawa Program based on 25 years of research is a best seller and has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show.
The good news,
The key to Okinawa's astounding record, good eating, can be copied in the USA. "The foods are also in the States, if people consume them in the right balance," says Craig Willcox, a medical anthropologist at the Okinawa Prefectural University College of Nursing. He is co-author of The Okinawa Program along with his twin brother, Bradley, of the Harvard Medical School, and longevity expert Makoto Suzuki.
For centuries, Okinawa has been known for people who live long and well. On the outskirts of Ogimi, carved into a stone marker facing the sea, is an old Okinawan saying, "At 70 you are still a child, at 80 a young man or woman. And if at 90 someone from Heaven invites you over, tell him, Just go away, and come back when I am 100. "
Even for Okinawa, this fishing and farming village is unique. Six of Ogimi's 3,500 residents are 100 years old or older a rate equal to 171 centenarians per 100,000. And local officials think the figure would be higher if it included natives who have left the village.
Villager Ushi Okushima, 100, has been known to outdrink the young journalists who come to interview her about the village's health secrets. She recently left an inebriated TV film crew sleeping in her living room. Okushima believes the secret to her longevity is awamori, the local rice wine she seasons with mugwort and drinks every night at bedtime. "It helps my sleep," she says. "I sleep well after I drink."
Meeting at an Ogimi restaurant, she hands over bottles of her homemade brew to visitors. "When I was young, 50 or 60, I would drink a full glass," she says. "Sometimes I'd drink with friends and couldn't find my way home." These days, she has a teacupful or two. Okushima's awamori may be a powerful elixir, but scientists say the key to the health of Okinawan elders is more conventional. They eat remarkably healthy food. The traditional Okinawan diet is heavy on grains, fish and vegetables, and light on meat, eggs and dairy food.
The Okinawans are especially enthusiastic eaters of tofu. Ogimi villagers like to mix it with seaweed in a concoction called "mooi tofu." Eating tofu and other soy products works wonders because soybeans are loaded with flavonoids, nutrients known to fight breast and prostate cancer and believed to combat heart disease.
Okinawans also consume lots of fish.
Fish, particularly cold-water varieties such as tuna, mackerel and salmon, contains high concentrations of omega-3 fatty acids, which reduce the risk of heart disease and breast cancer.
They steer clear of artery-clogging meats and dairy products. Results are astounding: Compared with the USA, death rates are 82% lower for coronary heart disease, 86% lower for prostate cancer, 57% lower for ovarian cancer and 82% lower for breast cancer.
"Simply put," write Program authors, "if Americans lived more like the Okinawans, we would have to close down 80% of the coronary care units and one-third of the cancer wards in the United States, and a lot of nursing homes would be out of business."
Unfortunately, younger Okinawans and those who have left the island largely have abandoned the good habits.
About 100,000 Okinawans moved to Brazil and quickly adopted the eating regimen of their new home, one heavy on red meat. Result, the life expectancy of the Brazilian Okinawans is 17 years lower than Okinawa's 81 years, Suzuki says.
The younger generation goes to the fast-food outlets that surround U.S. military bases. The change has had devastating results, Okinawans younger than 50 have Japan's highest rates of obesity, heart disease and premature death.
At least some things never change. Ushi Okushima's daughter Kikue is 74 and a social worker. She says her 100-year-old mother still treats her the way she did nearly seven decades ago.
"She criticizes my hairstyle," she sighs. "She still talks to me like I'm a small kid."
This story was compiled from several sources including the authors of the The Okinawa Centenarian Study.
Links to read more about this and to read more about the book:
The Okinawa Centenarian Study Web Site in English.
More about the book.
More about the study and the research facts.
Read More about the Research Team.
The Okinawa Program