Tane Ikai

Tane Ikai (猪飼 たね) was a Japanese supercentenarian who holds the record as the oldest verified person ever from Japan and from Asia. More than 17 years after her death, she is still the only fully verified person ever from Asia to have reached age 116. However, if Jiroemon Kimura lives to April 19, 2013, he will become the second Asian person. She is the sixth oldest person ever recorded in history.

Tane Ikai was born on January 18, 1879 in Kansei. She was the third daughter of six children of a farming family. She married at age 20, had three sons and a daughter, and separated from her husband when she was 38 in 1917. She entered a nursing home at age 89 in 1968. In 1988, at the age of 109, she suffered a stroke and was moved to a hospital, where she remained bedridden for the rest of her life.

Ikai became Japan's oldest person at age 113 in 1992 following the death of 114-year-old Waka Shirahama. She outlived all of her children and died on July 12, 1995, aged 116 years and 175 days. An autopsy indicated that she died of kidney failure. Jeanne Calment became the last living link in the 1870s.