For the first time, Japan has more than one hundred thousand people at least one hundred years old. It is not a surprise, because the number has been growing continuously for 56 years, but it is the first time that the curve has exceeded the one hundred thousand threshold, a figure which reaffirms Japan’s world record. Specifically, there are 107,677 citizens aged at least one hundred years old, according to data released by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare of Tokyo, almost eight thousand more than twelve months ago.
And the centenarians’ club is dominated by women who number 94,298, i.e. 87.6% of the total. When the government started counting them in 1963, there were 153 centenarians, in 1981 they exceeded one thousand, in 1998 ten thousand, in 2012 fifty thousand. The longest-lived of all is Fuyo Kishimoto, 114 years old, who lives in Kyoto and holds the title of the oldest woman in the country. Among men, the record goes to Hikaru Kato, 112 years old, from Kumamoto.
The Japanese record
In 2024, according to the World Bank, life expectancy in Japan was about 84 years, among the highest values on the planet. The paradox is that this long-lived country is emptying. At the 2025 census there were approximately 123 million inhabitants, more than three million less than five years earlier. And the data released by the Ministry of Health in June 2026 say that in 2025 births fell to 671 thousand, the lowest level since records began, with a fertility rate of 1.14 children per woman. Despite almost 1.6 million deaths, Japan has lost over 900 thousand inhabitants in twelve months.
According to the latest report from the statistics office of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, there are 36.19 million people over 65, 29.4% of residents, the highest share among industrialized countries. The projections of the National Institute for Research on Population and Social Security, the public body that develops demographic scenarios, indicate that in 2040 those aged over sixty-five will be almost 35% and that in 2070 the population will fall below 90 million, with the elderly close to 39%.
The ranking of the oldest countries in the world
Istat confirms that Italy is among the longest-living countries in the world, with a life expectancy at birth of 83.4 years. Our trajectory increasingly resembles that of Japan, because along with the years of life the age of the population also increases, and Italy has long occupied the top positions in the world median age ranking. In fact, according to the World Population Prospects, the most recent revision of the United Nations’ demographic estimates, taken up in the elaboration of Our World in Data, this is the ranking:
- Monaco, with a median age of 53.1 years;
- Japan with 50.2 years;
- San Marino with 49.1;
- Italy with 48.6;
- Portugal with 47.2;
- Greece with 47.1;
- Spain with 46.3;
- South Korea with 46.2;
- Bosnia and Herzegovina with 46.1;
- Germany with 45.7;
- Croatia with 45.5.
Because Italy is so old
As of 1 January 2026, there were 58.9 million residents in Italy, again according to Istat data, with an average age of the resident population of 47.1 years. The geography of aging, however, is not uniform: the oldest area is the Centre, where the average age reaches 47.7 years, followed by the North with 47.3, while the South, with 46.4 years, remains the youngest area in Italy. There are 14.8 million people over 65, 25.1% of the population, i.e. one in four, and those over eighty-five exceed 2.5 million and centenarians are around 24,700. Furthermore, in 2025, 355 thousand children were born and 652 thousand people died; the average number of children per woman fell to 1.14, a new historic low, while life expectancy rose to 81.7 years for men and 85.7 years for women.
Istat forecasts indicate that between 2025 and 2030 the average age will increase from 46.9 to 48 years, and the over 65s will rise from 24.7% to 27.2% of the population. Looking ahead to 2050, the average age will exceed the threshold of 51 and those aged over sixty-five will reach 34.5%, one third of the population.
Why is Italy so old? The most immediate explanation is that the elderly are now more numerous than the young. Yet behind that relationship there are different forces that have been acting in the same direction for years. The first is the collapse in births. The second is an increasingly longer life, made possible by a medicine that has learned to cure or keep under control diseases that were once fatal and by a widespread healthcare system. Added to these are a higher level of education, which moves forward the age at which families are formed and children are born, and lifestyles are on average healthier than those of previous generations.
