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Tane Ikai

Tane Ikai (Japanese: 猪飼たね) was a Japanese supercentenarian, who held the title of the oldest person and woman ever from Japan and Asia until Misao Okawa surpassed her age on 28 August 2014.

Biography

Tane Ikai was born in Aichi, Japan on 18 January 1879. She married at the age of 20 and had three sons and a daughter. She separated from her husband in 1917 at the age of 38.


On a typical day, Ikai would eat three very basic meals of rice porridge. In 1968, at the age of 89, she moved into a nursing home where she was to live for the next 20 years. She played an active role in activities at the home and enjoyed making pottery and sewing until suffering her first stroke in 1978 at the age of 99. In 1988, at the age of 109, Ikai suffered another stroke and was moved to a hospital, where she remained bedridden for the rest of her life. She died of kidney failure on 12 July 1995 as the oldest recorded Japanese person ever at the age of 116 years, 175 days (her record was broken by Misao Okawa in 2014).

Ikai is the first of only six Asians to reach 116, the others being Jiroemon Kimura, Misao Okawa, Nabi Tajima, Chiyo Miyako, and Kane Tanaka, all of whom reached it around 20 years after Ikai. She never held the title of oldest living person as Jeanne Calment (1875–1997) was still alive when she died.


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