Kane Tanaka, the world's oldest living person, turned 119 years old on Sunday, according to a Twitter post published by her great-granddaughter, Junko Tanaka.
"Great achievement. (Kane Tanaka) reached 119 years of age," Junko tweeted, with a photograph of her great-grandmother, whom she saw in December. "I hope you'll continue to live life cheerfully and to the fullest."
Kane is the world's oldest verified living person since the death of Chiyo Miyako on 22 July 2018. She is the third-oldest verified person and oldest verified Japanese person ever.
Tanaka was born as Kane Ota on 2 January 1903 in the village of Wajiro (now part of Higashi-ku, Fukuoka), on the southern island of Kyushu, the third daughter and seventh child of her parents, Kumayoshi and Kuma Ota. Kane married her cousin Hideo Tanaka in 1922, with whom she had two sons and two daughters. The couple also adopted a third daughter during their marriage, the second daughter of Hideo's sister.
After World War II, the couple continued working in the store, with Kane converting to Christianity under the influence of pastors stationed by the United States military. Her husband died in 1993 at the age of 90, after 71 years of marriage. Kane has been living in a nursing home in Higashi-ku, Fukuoka since September 2018.
She occasionally plays Othello and takes short walks in the facility's hallways. Her hobbies include calligraphy and solving arithmetic problems.
At the age of 114, she was interviewed by KBC in September 2017. Tanaka has said that she would like to live to the age of 120, crediting her faith in God, family, sleep, hope, eating good food, and practicing mathematics for her longevity.
On 9 March 2019, Tanaka was officially presented with the "World's Oldest Living Person" and "World's Oldest Living Woman" titles by the Guinness World Records, verifying her longevity claim. On 19 September 2020, she broke the record of longest-lived Japanese person ever, as well as the third-oldest person ever in the world, after surpassing Nabi Tajima's age of 117 years, 260 days. On 2 January 2021 and 2 January 2022, Tanaka celebrated her 118th and 119th birthdays, becoming only the third person to have ever verifiably done so.
She has lived through five imperial reigns.
Tanaka has lived through a multitude of historical events, surviving two world wars and the 1918 Spanish flu. Her life has spanned 49 Summer and Winter Olympic Games. She was also supposed to hold the Olympic torch at the 2020 Summer Olympics, although she pulled out of it due to concerns regarding an increase in COVID-19 cases in Japan.
Tanaka's longevity has since contributed to debates on the maximum lifespan for human’s. Her age has been compared with Jeanne Calment's and Sarah Knauss's, to the 115–125-year window that is speculated to be the possible maximum lifespan range.