Japan Sets Record as People Aged 100 Surpass 100,000

For the first time in the 63 years Japan has been counting, the number of people living past their 100th birthday has broken 100,000.

Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare confirmed the figure on September 15,2026.

There were 107,677 centenarians(person who is 100 years old or older), up 7,914 from a year earlier, marking the 56th straight year the total has climbed.Nearly nine out of every ten of them, 94,298, are women.

Japan's oldest living woman is now 114-year-old Fuyo Kishimoto of Kyoto, and the oldest man is 112-year-old Hikaru Kato of Kumamoto.

When the ministry started this survey in 1963, only 153 people in the whole country had reached 100.

The number passed 1,000 in 1981, 10,000 in 1998, and has now grown more than 700-fold since records began, according to the ministry's data.

The steady rise reflects decades of improvement in Japan's healthcare, diet, and living conditions rather than any single breakthrough.

Health Minister Kenichiro Ueno told reporters on Tuesday that he was glad so many people are staying active and healthy well into old age, CNN reported.

Japan already has the world's highest number of centenarians, and its average life expectancy stood at 84 years as of 2024, according to World Bank figures, well above the United States' 79.

That same longevity is now testing the country's finances.

Japan's population has been shrinking and aging for years, and every additional person who lives past 100 is one more person drawing on a pension and healthcare system funded by a working-age population that keeps getting smaller.

The government has called this demographic shift a slow-moving emergency, and policies like more flexible working hours and expanded childcare support have so far done little to reverse the underlying trend.

For now, the milestone is being marked the way Japan marks it every September: centenarians honored around Respect for the Aged Day with a letter from the prime minister and a silver-plated cup, a small ceremony for a number that keeps rising every single year, with no sign yet of slowing down.