Kane Tanaka

was a Japanese supercentenarian who, until her death at the age of , was the world's oldest verified living person, following the death of Chiyo Miyako on 22 July 2018.

Personal life Tanaka was born as on 2 January 1903 in the village of Wajiro (now part of Higashi-ku, Fukuoka), on the southern island of Kyushu, Kane and her family said she was actually born on 26 December 1902 and that her parents delayed the process of filing the report for a week because they were not sure if she would survive as she was born prematurely.

Kane's early childhood was during the last years of the Meiji period, which ended in 1912 when she was nine. Kane married her cousin Hideo Tanaka in 1922, with whom she had two sons and two daughters. The couple also adopted their niece, the second daughter of Hideo's sister. The couple worked in a store selling shiruko and udon noodles.

Kane's husband was later drafted into the military, where he served from 1937 to 1939; one of her sons was captured towards the end of World War II as a military POW and was held captive in Siberia before being released and returning home in 1947. Retiring from working at their store at 63, Kane travelled to the United States in the 1970s to visit her relatives in California and Colorado. Her husband died in 1993 at the age of 90 after 71 years of marriage. Tanaka was supposed to hold the Olympic torch at the 2020 Summer Olympics, but she withdrew from it due to concerns regarding an increase in COVID-19 cases in Japan. She occasionally played the board game Othello, and took short walks in the nursing home's hallways. Her hobbies included calligraphy and solving arithmetic problems. No cause of death was given, but her grandson said she had been feeling ill since late 2021, according to the Japanese Health Ministry.

Health and longevity

Tanaka had several major illnesses and was infected with paratyphoid fever with her adopted daughter at the age of 35. She underwent pancreatic cancer surgery at the age of 45. On 9 March 2019, Tanaka was officially presented with the "World's Oldest Living Person" and "World's Oldest Living Woman" titles by Guinness World Records, verifying her longevity claim.

Tanaka had said that she wanted to live to the age of 120, crediting her faith in God, family, sleep, hope, eating good food and practicing mathematics for her longevity. Her longevity, along with that of Jeanne Calment, has contributed to the debate that the maximum lifespan for humans could be 115–125 years. After Tanaka's death, Frenchwoman Lucile Randon became the world's oldest validated living person.