World's Oldest Woman Dies Kane Tanaka Dies At 119 RTL Online

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April 25, 2022 – 11:54 am

Friends and relatives only celebrated Kane Tanaka’s 119th birthday in January – full of hope that the Japanese woman will also experience her next “round” birthday in 2023. But now Japanese broadcaster NHK announces that the elderly woman has died in hospital.

Kane Tanaka had five children, five grandchildren and eight great-grandchildren.

Japanese 116-year-old Kane Tanaka celebrates during a ceremony to recognize her as the oldest person in the world and the oldest woman in the world by Guinness World Records in Fukuoka, Japan, March 9, 2019. Required credit Kyodo/via REUTE

Kane Tanaka with the “World’s Oldest Woman” award (pictured).

In the spring of 2017, Kane Tanaka was honored as the “oldest woman in the world”. She was born on January 2, 1903, the seventh of eight children – the year the Wright brothers took off in a powered airplane for the first time. The Japanese woman married in 1922 and had four children, one of whom she adopted. She and her husband sold udon noodles and rice at a small shop in Fukuoka City.

For her 117th birthday, she was said to still get up at 6am every day. She has a passion for mathematics and the Othello board game. She also likes to eat chocolate.

At the end of his long life, Kane Tanaka could no longer speak, but he still used gestures to communicate with the people around him. She died in a hospital in Fukuoka, western Japan, on April 19. (Reuters/lha)