The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday.
The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks.
As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement.
Photo: EPA-EFE
On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of Japan’s population.
The proportion puts Japan at the top of a list of 200 countries and regions with a population of more than 100,000 people, the Japanese Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications said.
Japan is home to the world’s oldest living person, Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908, and is 116 years old, according to the US-based Gerontology Research Group.
The previous record-holder, Maria Branyas Morera, died last month in Spain at the age of 117.
Itooka lives in a nursing home in Ashiya, Hyogo Prefecture, the ministry said.
She often says “thank you” to the nursing home staff and expresses nostalgia about her hometown, the ministry said.
“I have no idea at all about what’s the secret of my long life,” Japan’s oldest man, Kiyotaka Mizuno, who is 110, told local media.
Mizuno, who lives in Iwata, Shizuoka Prefecture, with his family, gets up at 6:30am every morning and eats three meals a day — without being picky about his food.
His hobby is listening to live sports, including sumo wrestling, the ministry said.
Japan is facing a steadily worsening population crisis, as its expanding elderly population leads to soaring medical and welfare costs, with a shrinking labor force to pay for it.
The country’s overall population is 124 million, after declining by 595,000, government data showed.
The government has attempted to slow the decline and aging of its population without meaningful success, while gradually extending the retirement age — with 65 becoming the rule for all employers from fiscal 2025.
Former Nicaraguan president Violeta Chamorro, who brought peace to Nicaragua after years of war and was the first woman elected president in the Americas, died on Saturday at the age of 95, her family said. Chamorro, who ruled the poor Central American country from 1990 to 1997, “died in peace, surrounded by the affection and love of her children,” said a statement issued by her four children. As president, Chamorro ended a civil war that had raged for much of the 1980s as US-backed rebels known as the “Contras” fought the leftist Sandinista government. That conflict made Nicaragua one of
COMPETITION: The US and Russia make up about 90 percent of the world stockpile and are adding new versions, while China’s nuclear force is steadily rising, SIPRI said Most of the world’s nuclear-armed states continued to modernize their arsenals last year, setting the stage for a new nuclear arms race, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) said yesterday. Nuclear powers including the US and Russia — which account for about 90 percent of the world’s stockpile — had spent time last year “upgrading existing weapons and adding newer versions,” researchers said. Since the end of the Cold War, old warheads have generally been dismantled quicker than new ones have been deployed, resulting in a decrease in the overall number of warheads. However, SIPRI said that the trend was likely
NUCLEAR WARNING: Elites are carelessly fomenting fear and tensions between nuclear powers, perhaps because they have access to shelters, Tulsi Gabbard said After a trip to Hiroshima, US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard on Tuesday warned that “warmongers” were pushing the world to the brink of nuclear war. Gabbard did not specify her concerns. Gabbard posted on social media a video of grisly footage from the world’s first nuclear attack and of her staring reflectively at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial. On Aug. 6, 1945, the US obliterated Hiroshima, killing 140,000 people in the explosion and by the end of the year from the uranium bomb’s effects. Three days later, a US plane dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, leaving abut 74,000 people dead by the
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is to visit Canada next week, his first since relations plummeted after the assassination of a Canadian Sikh separatist in Vancouver, triggering diplomatic expulsions and hitting trade. Analysts hope it is a step toward repairing ties that soured in 2023, after then-Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau pointed the finger at New Delhi’s involvement in murdering Hardeep Singh Nijjar, claims India furiously denied. An invitation extended by new Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to Modi to attend the G7 leaders summit in Canada offers a chance to “reset” relations, former Indian diplomat Harsh Vardhan Shringla said. “This is a
RSS