NEW YORK (VINnews) — At 118 years of age, Kane Tanaka holds the title of the world’s oldest living person. Soon she hopes to hold another title – the worlds’ oldest living Olympic torchbearer. Tanaka has been chosen to carry the Olympic torch in May as it passes through Shime, a town in the region where she lives.
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Tanaka, who is still capable of walking with a walker, will probably be pushed in a wheelchair for most of the 100-meter leg. However she is determined to walk the last few steps before she hands the torch to the next runner.
Tanaka keeps her brain active by playing board games and reading and she credits her long life to staying curious and doing math, which keeps her mind sharp and body healthy.
Born in 1903, the year the first solo flight was made, she married a rice shop owner at 19, had five children and worked in the shop until age 103. She has five children and eight great-grandchildren. Twice she survived cancer, twice she lived through global pandemics but she continues to enjoy life as much as possible, zooming with her children when she cannot be with them during the coronavirus lockdowns. She is still very fond of fizzy drinks, especially Coca Cola.
“It’s great she reached that age and she can still keep up an active lifestyle — we want other people to see that and feel inspired, and not to think age is a barrier,” her grandson Eiji Tanaka, who is in his 60s, told CNN.
Eiji adds another secret to her longevity: “I don’t remember her talking much about the past … She’s very forward thinking — she really enjoys living in the present.”
Tanaka is almost as old as the modern Olympic Games, which began in 1896, but even as a supercentenarian – aged over 110 – she is not so unique in a country which boasts some 80,000 centenarians, with 1 in every 1,565 people in Japan over the age of 100.
Tanaka has held the title of world’s oldest living person since 2019 but now she hopes to break the record held by Jeanne Calment, the worlds oldest-ever documented person, who died in 1997 aged 122.