You Say Its Your Birthday! Part 2

Mystery as Tokyo loses track of centenarians
By MARI YAMAGUCHI/AP

TOKYO -Japanese authorities admitted Tuesday they'd lost track of a 113-year-old woman listed as the Tokyo's oldest, days after police searched the home of the city's official oldest man — only to find his long-dead, mummified body.

Officials launched a search this week for Fusa Furuya, born in July 1897 and listed as Tokyo's oldest citizen, after it emerged her whereabouts are unknown.

Several other celebrated centenarians are also unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping and follow-up in a country that prides itself in its number of long-lived citizens but also frets about an unraveling of traditional family ties.

Officials updating their records ahead of a holiday next month honoring the elderly found that Furuya does not live at the address where she is registered, said Hiroshi Sugimoto, an official in Tokyo's Suginami ward.

Furuya's 79-year-old daughter, whose name was not disclosed, told officials she was not aware of her mother's registration at that address and said she thought her mother was just outside Tokyo with her younger brother, with whom she has lost touch. But that address turned out to be a vacant lot.

Police are also interviewing the brother and another daughter, but still have not been able to locate Furuya.

The disappearance follows last week's grisly discovery — also by officials updating the most-elderly list — that the man listed as Tokyo's oldest male, who would have been 111 years old, had actually been dead for some 30 years and his decayed body was still in his home.

Police are investigating the family of Sogen Kato for alleged abandonment and swindling his pension money. Kato is believed to have died around 1978 after he had retreated to his bedroom, saying he wanted to be a living Buddha.
Officials said that they had not personally contacted the city's two oldest people for decades.

Authorities are also looking for a 106-year-old man who is missing in Nagoya, central Japan, Kyodo News agency reported. The Asahi newspaper said three more centenarians were unaccounted for in Tokyo.

The missing elderly people could cast doubt on the exact number of centenarians in Japan, a figure that has been rising for decades.

Officially, Japan has 40,399 people aged 100 or older, including 4,800 in Tokyo, according to an annual health ministry report last year marking the Sept 21 holiday for the elderly.

Each centenarian receives a letter and a gift from a local government office — usually by mail. Officials in fewer than half of the country's 47 prefectures (states) routinely keep track of centenarians in person, Kyodo said, citing its own tally.


I personally feel cheated by this article. How many of our American grandfathers and great-grandfathers have been hoisted from the record books by Asians with older ages? Now we come to find out these old Asians have been dead for years. Its almost like the voter fraud scene from 'Black Sheep.' Sure, maybe I should feel worse for the abondoned elderly but they probably dont have it all bad. If they were with their Eskimo relatives they would have already been pushed off to die on an ice block. So maybe I'm wrong for getting envious when I see some Asian getting well wishes from Willard Scott. All I know is my 103-year-old great grandmother didn't get a nod from that jelly loving bastard. So screw him and screw Japan. USA and Great Grandma Rosie all the way!!!