Shigechiyo Izumi

Shigechiyo Izumi - 120 years, 237 days, Japan
Shigechiyo Izumi who died in 1986 was originally validated by the Guinness Book of Records and included in the GRG published lists [75]. Doubts about his longevity were raised well before his death [33]. Some of these doubts were similar to rumours about Jeanne Calment [37,38]. Although scientific papers disputing his age were published (in Japanese) soon after his death [34, 35], he was not removed from the record books until around 2011. His data remained in the IDL until 2020 when it was removed after a request from us. His claim was still included into a plot from the 2020 statistical study [10]. We understand that removing invalidated claims from IDL could create a bias against higher ages but how sure can we be that lower ages there which were not thoroughly checked don’t contain enough errors to invalidate the conclusions derived from them?.

The Guinness Book of Records had accepted a letter from the Japanese Prime Minister’s Office confirming his age based on the family register. It is now believed that his birth was confused with that of an older brother who died as an infant. It was common practice in the region at the time to reuse the name and registration of a child who had died. Though there seems to be no proof that Izumi was not a supercentenarian and his physician said that his age was consistent in multiple censuses [31], Izumi’s claim had “been rejected by almost all experts who are familiar with it… and the common belief is that he was in fact "only" 105 years old at the time of his death” [32]. The original papers describing Izumi’s case are however not readily available.

This case is mentioned here because it shows the importance of exploring the full family history, especially the list of siblings, in order to complete a validation. Official confirmations of claimed age, such as the letter from Japanese Prime Minister’s Office in the case of Izumi [31] or the Court of Tarascon in the case of Calment should not be considered as scientific proofs while the burden of proof should be on validators and not on sceptics. This case also illustrates that there is sometimes unnecessary delay in removing dubious claims from the official lists.