World's oldest person dies at 114

The world’s oldest person has dies in a nursing home in Japan at the age of 114, an official said today.

Yone Minagawa, who became the world’s oldest person earlier this year, raised four sons and a daughter on her own by peddling flowers and vegetables.

She died yesterday afternoon, said Toshiro Tachibana, an official at the nursing home in the former mining town of Fukuchi.

The attending doctor gave old age as the cause of death, he said.

“Her appetite had been declining recently and her energy fading, so the family had asked us to make her as comfortable as possible. The death was not sudden,” Tachibana said.

Born on January 4, 1893, Minagawa was named the world’s oldest person by the Guinness Book of World Records in January following the death of Emma Faust Tillman, also 114, in the United States.

Minagawa outlived all of her children except one daughter, and has seven grandchildren, 12 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren, according to the nursing home.

The world’s oldest person is now 114-year-old Edna Parker of Shelbyville in the US state of Indiana, who was born on April 20, 1893, according to the Gerontology Research Group.

Japan has one of the world’s longest average life spans – a factor often attributed to a healthy diet rich in fish and rice.

The world’s oldest man is also Japanese – Tomoji Tanabe, 111, born on September 18, 1895.

Tanabe lives in the southern city of Miyazaki, according to Guinness World Records.

In 2006, Japanese women set a new record for life expectancy at 85.81 years, while men live an average of about 79 years.

The number of Japanese living beyond 100 has almost quadrupled in the past 10 years and is soon expected to surpass 28,000, the government announced last September.

There are more active centenarians than before, and the rapidly greying population is adding to concerns over Japan’s overburdened public pension system.

Fukuchi is about 840 kilometres (520 miles) southwest of Tokyo.