A Japanese woman, Tomiko Itooka, was named the world’s oldest living person by the Guinness World Records following the death of 117-year-old Spanish woman Maria Branyas Morera. Born on May 23, 1908, Itooka is 116 years old. The Gerontology Research Group has validated her age.
Tomiko Itooka currently resides in a nursing home in Ashiya, Japan. Before moving to this facility in 2019, she lived with her daughters until she was 110. Itooka celebrated her 116th birthday at the nursing home, even receiving a card from the mayor. She is a little hard of hearing but can still communicate clearly. Her favorite food is bananas, and she drinks Calpis every day.
Itooka’s birth year coincides with when French radio pioneer Gustave Ferrié transmitted the first long-distance message ever sent from the Eiffel Tower and when the Wright Brothers made their first public flights in Europe and America. She married at 20 and had four children (two daughters and two sons). During the Second World War, she managed her husband’s textile factory.
A former mountaineer, Itooka continued to climb mountains well into her 70s. She climbed Japan’s Mount Ontake twice, wearing sneakers rather than hiking boots. When she was in her 80s, she completed the Saigoku Kannon Pilgrimage not once but twice. At age 100, she walked up the many stone steps of Japan’s Ashiya Shrine without a walking stick. According to her family, these long hikes are the secret to her long life.
The oldest verified person to have lived was a French woman named Jeanne Louise Calment. She died in 1997, living to be 122 years and 164 days old.