By TOMOE ISHIKAWA/ Staff Writer
September 14, 2021 at 18:05 JST
Kane Tanaka, Japan's oldest woman, in Fukuoka in September 2020, when she was 117 (Provided by the Fukuoka city government)
At age 118, Japan's oldest woman, Kane Tanaka, is in good company.
The nation's number of centenarians is set to hit 86,510 on Sept. 15, beating the previous high for the 51st consecutive year.
Like the Fukuoka resident, most of the centenarians are women, at 76,450, roughly 88 percent of the total, according to data released by the health ministry on Sept. 14 ahead of “Rojin no Hi” (Day for the aged) the next day.
The country's oldest man, Mikizo Ueda, 111, makes his home in Nara.
People in that age group were once again concentrated in Shimane Prefecture, which had the highest number of centenarians per 100,000 people for the ninth year in a row, with 134.75, followed by Kochi Prefecture with 126.29 and Kagoshima Prefecture with 118.74.
Saitama Prefecture was again the cellar dweller, logging the lowest number for 32 straight years, with just 42.40 centenarians.
Japan's overall number of centenarians climbed 6,060 from the previous year, the health ministry data showed, a smaller rise than in 2020, when the figure rose 9,176 from the prior year. That spike was likely due to the large number of births in 1920, shortly after the end of World War I.
Preliminary figures from the 2020 census showed Japan's total population is at about 126.23 million, with roughly 0.07 percent aged 100 or over.
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