A 116-year-old woman who used to be a mountaineer is set to be named the world’s oldest person by Guinness World Records.
A research group announced the news on Wednesday following the death of a 117-year-old Spanish woman earlier this week.
Tomiko Itooka, who was born on May 23, 1908, lives in the western Japanese city of Ashiya, the U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group said.
She has enjoyed climbing as a hobby for most of her life.
She is next in line for the title of world’s oldest person after Maria Branyas Morera died in a Spanish nursing home on Monday, according to the group.
Itooka, a mother-of-three, was born in the year when a long-distance radio message was sent from the Eiffel Tower for the first time, and when the Wright Brothers made their first public flights in Europe and America.
After her husband’s death in 1979, she lived alone in her husband’s hometown in Nara Prefecture for ten years. During this time, she frequently enjoyed mountain climbing, including Mt. Nijo.
In her 70s, Itooka often went climbing and twice scaled Japan’s 3,067-metre (10,062-ft) Mount Ontake – surprising her guide by climbing the mountain in sneakers instead of hiking boots, the research group said.
In her 80s, she twice participated in the Osaka 33 Kannon Pilgrimage (a pilgrimage to 33 temples).
At the age of 100, she walked up the lengthy stone steps of Japan’s Ashiya Shrine without using a cane, the group added.
Maria Branyas Morera, the previous record holder, died in Catalonia in Spain at the age of 117 years and 168 days, her family said on Tuesday.
Born in San Francisco, US, in 1907, she lived through two World Wars, the Spanish Civil War and the 1918 flu pandemic and faced many personal hardships in her early years, including losing her father during her family’s emigration to Spain and suffering hearing loss as a child.
Her remarkable longevity was recognised by both the Gerontology Research Group and the Guinness World Records, and Branyas Morera became a symbol of resilience, having survived Covid at age 113.
“Maria Branyas has left us. She died as she wished: in her sleep, peacefully and without pain,” her family wrote on her X account. Branyas Morera passed away on 19 August.
“We will always remember her for her advice and kindness.”
Catalonia’s president, Salvador Illa, re-shared the post and expressed his condolences to the family.
”Maria Branyas, the grandmother of Catalonia and the oldest person in the world, has left us. We lose an endearing woman, who has taught us the value of life and the wisdom of the years.”
Branyas Morera, who had spent the last 20 years at the Santa Maria del Tura nursing home in Olot, northeastern Spain, shared in a post on Tuesday that she was feeling “weak”.