Misao Okawa

Misao Okawa - 117 years, 27 days, Japan
A validation report for Misao Okawa was published in 2020 along with the similar case of Chiyo Miyako [76]. The validators are very honest about the shortcomings in her case and it provides an insight into the standard of verification that has likely been used in many other Japanese cases where no official report has been made available.

Misao Okawa is assumed to have been born in 1898, but the Koseki used to verify her birth date is a copy from 1951. The original Koseki would only have a record of her age to the nearest month according to the records of the time. This would have been updated around 1915 and then copied to her own family Koseki when she married in 1919. This Koseki would have been copied again when the law changed after the World War 2, assuming that the records survived through a time when many records were destroyed. The Koseki reproduced in the validation is yet another renewal from a time when her own children started to marry.

The validators searched for school records but did not find them. Her family relocated several times making it more difficult to trace important records that are held locally in Japan.

Her longevity claim is accepted by the validators simply because they found no inconsistencies in the family testimony. Of course such testimony cannot reach back far enough to cover her own birth and childhood. The validators admit that the best evidence that she had a very long life may be that her own children were alive at supposed ages of 93 and 95 when she died.

This evidence does not come close to what is needed for even the weakest standards of longevity validations. Japanese claims have been plagued by misidentification of birth records and recreation of documents after wartime damage. The Japanese have a high respect for elderly people and there is a good basic state pension scheme that generates a temptation to exaggerate age when missing documents have to be recreated from family testimony. With this historical background it is not good enough to give the benefit of the doubt when no evidence contrary to the claim can be found. At the very least original archived Koseki of the parental family must be examined.

There are many longevity claims from around the world where only mid-to-late-life documents are available for proof of birth. These are never accepted as meeting the standard required for official validation. It is difficult to understand why Japanese claims are treated differently.