Japan records 107,677 people aged 100 or older, passing 100,000 for the first time

Japan had 107,677 residents aged 100 or older as of 1 September, the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare said on 15 September. The figure is up 7,914 from a year earlier and is the first time the count has crossed 100,000. It is also the 56th consecutive annual rise. Women account for 94,298 of the group, or 87.6 percent. Men number 13,379.

The oldest woman is Fuyo Kishimoto of Kyoto, born 20 December 1911, who turned 114 last December. She became the oldest living person in Japan after Shigeko Kagawa of Yamatokoriyama, Nara Prefecture, died in August at 115. The oldest man is Hikaru Kato of Kumamoto, born 2 May 1914, who turned 112 in May.

Another 54,294 people are expected to turn 100 during fiscal 2026, which runs to 31 March 2027. That incoming class is up 1,984 from the previous year. They are due a letter from the prime minister and a silver-plated sake cup, the gift the state has given new centenarians for decades around Respect for the Aged Day.

When the survey began in 1963, Japan counted 153 people aged 100 or more. The total passed 1,000 in 1981, 10,000 in 1998 and 50,000 in 2012. Since 1970, when the number was 310, it has risen every year. There are now 87.51 centenarians per 100,000 residents.

Health minister Kenichiro Ueno said he was glad so many people are living long lives and pointed to medicine and technology. He also repeated the government's pledge to keep social security in a shape that can support an older population.

What the milestone measures

A count above 100,000 is a record, not a surprise. Japan has the world's highest life expectancy and a fertility rate that has sat below replacement for decades. The centenarian file is the far tail of that distribution. It tells you that the people who reached adulthood in the 1930s and 1940s, and then lived through the postwar public-health expansion, are still here in industrial numbers.

It also tells you about cost. Long life is not the same as healthy life. Many of the 107,677 need daily care. The incoming 54,294 will join them inside a workforce that is shrinking. Ueno's sentence about social security is the policy point hiding inside the celebration. Pensions, long-term care insurance and hospital beds are priced off a population structure that no longer exists.

Women's share at 87.6 percent matches the gap in survival that Japan has shown for years. The male count rose by 1,400, the female count by 6,514. Those increments will keep the sex ratio lopsided unless male survival at the extreme ages starts to catch up, which it has not.

The names behind the table

Kishimoto lives in Kyoto. Kato lives in Kumamoto. The ministry publishes those two names each year because the public holiday needs a face. Tetsuo Sato, 106, in the rice village of Osonogo in Niigata, was one of the people reporters found after the release. He is hard of hearing and has poor sight. He makes notebooks from old calendars and wrapping paper and plans a 107th birthday at a hot-springs hotel. That is the texture the table does not hold: a man in a mountain village whose days are paper and family, counted as one of 107,677.

Demographers outside Japan have warned that some national centenarian totals are inflated by bad records. Japan's basic resident register is a stronger base than most. The ministry compiles the September snapshot from that register. Errors still exist, especially in the oldest ages, but the trend from 153 to 107,677 is not an artefact of paperwork.

Respect for the Aged Day will come and go with letters and cups. The number that will matter next September is whether the increase stays near 8,000. If it does, the 100,000 line will look, in hindsight, like a station rather than a destination.