He was born the year that Bram Stoker published Dracula, he lived through a string of wars and deadly natural disasters and partly attributed his long life to eating light, but the planet's oldest man has finally succumbed to pneumonia.
Jiroemon Kimura, a former postman who turned 116 two months ago, broke the world record last year when he became the oldest man yet verified to have lived. He died peacefully in a hospital near Kyoto in western Japan yesterday, according to Kyodo News.
Born on April 19th, 1897, Mr Kimura survived his wife, two of his seven children, three emperors and more than 60 Japanese prime ministers. He left behind 13 grandchildren, 25 great-grand children and 14 great-great grandchildren.
“He has an amazingly strong will to live,” his nephew, Tamotsu Miyake, said in December. “He is strongly confident that he lives right and well.”
Mr Kimura left school at 14 and went to work for the post office, where he stayed for over 40 years. He retired in 1962, then farmed until he was in his 90s, waking early every day to read the newspaper and eat a traditional breakfast of rice, fish and pickles. He never suffered a serious illness, his family told the Japanese media.
Before turning 50, he had witnessed the levelling of Tokyo and Yokohama from an earthquake in 1923 and the almost total destruction of wartime Japan from US bombing in 1945. He lived for a time in Japanese-occupied Korea before returning home to marry.
His family said he did not smoke, he drank moderately and ate only until he was 80 per cent full, a practice many older Japanese consider the key to a healthy life.
Longevity was in his blood – four of his siblings lived to at least 90 and one survived to 100. Mr Kimura was only the third man in history to reach 115, according to the Guinness World Records.
Japan’s average life expectancy is 83 and nearly a quarter of the population is 65 or older.
Health authorities in the Kyoto town where Mr Kimura lived say they are studying his life to determine the secrets to his longevity. They say 94 other people in the town’s 60,000 population will be 100 years old this year.