Japan sets record of nearly 100k people aged over 100
47 comments
·September 13, 2025euroclear
Related, perhaps?
The secret to living to 110? Bad record-keeping, says Ig Nobel Prize winner.
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/life/2024/12/25/lifestyle/lifes...
em500
The linked BBC article devotes the last quarter of text to this. Don't assume they're taking all statistics at face value.
dadrian
Yeah, I assume this means there’s a lot of fraud
walthamstow
Probably but stats aside there certainly are a lot of very old people in Japan living near-normal lives compared to other developed countries.
After an hour in any town and I'd seen more 95+yos walking about than 10 years in Britain. And the number of times I saw 4 generations of men from one family in the bathhouse!
ekianjo
When there's money to be made from dead relatives, and an incentive for governments to make it look like people live beyond 100 so that they can claim superiority, yeah, that's a good recipe for massive fraud.
delichon
Then I may be immortal.
MichaelRo
After reading a couple of articles on fraud or just sloppy record keeping almost always behind centenarians, now I'm extremely skeptical on claims of people having past 100 years of age.
While there are a few people who seemed to be nearly immortal, as in "being around since forever", like the Queen Of England or recently deceased https://ro.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_Iliescu ... they didn't actually push past 100.
With all the care and life standard, seems to be a hard limit in our genes, so until something is done about that, better get realistic expectations.
reactordev
My grandfather made it to 98, but holy cow he was frail. The last few years of his life he couldn’t move much. Shuffle walked only a few inches. Drooled on every meal in front of him. I loved my grandfather but watching him in that state, we were all relieved for him when he passed.
He smoked only during WW2, was an army corp of engineers colonel when he retired from the military, came from a dirt farm in Michigan, engineered all kinds of civil and military projects. In the end, he still managed to engineer a smile. He absolutely loved maps/atlases/GIS.
mahkeiro
My wife grandmother made it to 102 and when she died (from an infection)it was a surprise as she was still very active and was walking everyday. Genetics and luck play also a big role.
sleigh-bells
I wonder why nearly all the focus in the US on healthy diets is on the Mediterranean diet and not the Japanese one...
(Greece commits a lot of pension fraud too)
onlyrealcuzzo
Probably the same reason why people focus so much on diet, and so little on lifestyle.
buzzerbetrayed
I’m not entirely sure what you’re getting at, but if you’re referring to weight, diet is significantly more important than lifestyle.
In other words, it’s way easier to out diet a bad lifestyle than out lifestyle a bad diet, if your goal is to not be overweight. Obviously that doesn’t apply to all health metrics.
water-data-dude
I think they're saying that diet is easier for people to commit to than going to the gym regularly and other lifestyle changes.
odiroot
Because it's not about diet, at least not mostly. It's about societal pressure. There's plenty of unhealthy easily accessible food even in Japan.
bee_rider
Everybody loves the Mediterranean, right? It has just the right mix of “down to Earth,” and sophistication.
PUSH_AX
Are we to believe only one or the other contains the key or is very healthy?
ninetyninenine
If you been to Japan, access to unhealthy food is extraordinarily easy. There’s so much bad food everywhere along with good food.
So in short food itself from Japan is not generically healthy… it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy.
Aurornis
> it’s the choices that Japanese people make within this environment that are healthy
This is a difficult truth for a lot of people to accept because it’s so much easier to blame invisible factors that are poorly understood: Microplastics, xenoesteogens, microbiome, trace lithium in the water supply, or the other trendy excuses.
In some cultures moderating your eating and controlling your weight comes with very high societal pressure. Everyone sees this from a young age and internalizes it. It’s hard to communicate how strong this pressure is and it gets lost when you only look at studies about the food supply.
zdw
I think this is mostly a social/societal thing - at an early age in schools they tell kids that they should only eat until they're 80% full. And there's substantial social pressure and bullying of anyone considered even mildly overweight.
Also, most people have a lot of walking/biking built into their daily schedule, especially in larger cities where having a car is impractical.
This all means that while there is a huge amount of sweets and fatty food, it's usually eaten in moderation, and people get exercise in their daily lives to work it off.
bobthepanda
The public school food system also encourages healthy eating, and also general societal responsibility since children are the ones responsible for serving and cleaning up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fze5s1SlqB8&t=1188s&pp=ygUsZ...
adrianN
The Mediterranean diet is pretty much nothing like people in the Mediterranean eat today either. Very old people had a radically different diet during most of their life.
jonathan920
I actually lived in Japan for 2+ mths , ate like how I ate more than what I ate in Singapore , literally lost 5kg. I was remote working there but do travel out and walk during weekends.
I actually miss the dirty oil fried food from Singapore , it’s much nicer when it’s greasy. Japan cooking oil is very clean , food quality is much higher too, less processed.
Aurornis
> but do travel out and walk during weekends.
Traveling somewhere where you walk more and then losing weight is such a common story that it has become a meme.
People also don’t accurately judge how much they eat. The portion sizes were likely smaller and the food composition was different than what you ate in Singapore, even if you thought you were eating the same. A lot has been written arguing about hidden factors in food, but in actual studies it always comes down to eating fewer calories. Eating less calorie dense foods and smaller portion sizes will do it. Even the GLP-1 studies revealed that the magic of their weight loss is directly proportional to reduction of calories eaten, even if patients eat exactly the same foods (but in smaller quantities or less frequently)
anikom15
That’s wonderful. I hope I can live so long.
fhdkweig
Only if I can stay in good health. I don't want to be like my grandmother who got a stroke and spent the last 10 years of her life laying in bed.
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aetherson
"Japan sets record of nearly 100k people whose children are committing pension fraud."
julianozen
Possible, but also Japan is such a high trust society I would be shocked if this is the reason
sfdlkj3jk342a
I don't think defrauding the government is all that related to what is typically meant by high/low trust societies.
It was already seen over a decade ago: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11258071
danans
> Japan is such a high trust society I would be shocked if this is the reason
Trust works both ways. There's also the trust that nobody will report anyone for the fraud, especially if it is widespread and normalized.
However, it would not surprise me if Japan actually did have high life expectancy rates because several other statistics seem to correlate with that, including low obesity, and universal access to healthcare.
aetherson
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sogen_Kato#Aftermath
I mean, clearly not all centarians in Japan are actually dead. But I think it's fairly straightforward that the numbers of super-elderly are inflated.
middleclick
If Japan is such a high trust society, why do they have separate train compartments for women?
ekianjo
[flagged]
wslh
Errors in population statistics are a global phenomenon, not just in Japan.
Ylpertnodi
What's DOGE in Japanese?
Anecdotal, but living in Japan now and I do eat much healthier and walk way more than I ever did. Sometimes it's just for fun since the city I live in is walkable, but also my commute to work involves at least an hour of walking to and from stations which I have gotten used to.
As others have mentioned, social pressure plays a role in fitness, but there definitely is an abundance of unhealthy food. A previous generation may have had less unhealthy food options, so I'd be interested to see if this trend continues. All the greasy fast food chains exist here too and they are always packed.