The Tokyo-Guinness World Record, announced on Monday, which coincides with Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan, has identified two Japanese sisters as the oldest identical twins in the world at the age of 107.
Ume no Sumiyama and Kodama Koume were born on November 5, 1913 on Shodoshima, the third and fourth of 11 siblings.
After graduating from elementary school, they were separated when Kodama was sent to work as a maid in Oita, Kyushu, on the southern main island of Japan. She later married there, but Sumiyama remained on the island where they grew up and had her own family.
The sisters later remembered their difficult youth. Growing up, they said they were bullied in Japan because of prejudice against multiple-fetal children.
Sisters who have been busy in their lives for decades rarely met until they were 70 years old. At the age of 70, he started pilgrimage to some of the 88 Shikoku temples and enjoyed the reunion.
The Guinness World Records stated in a statement that Sumiyama and Kodama were 107 years and 300 days old as of September 1, and the famous Japanese sisters Kinsan Ginsan and Kinsan Ginsan were 107 years and 175 days old. I broke the record.
Their family is to Guinness, and their sisters are from early record holders, lovingly known as “Kinsan, Ginsan,” who gained idol-like status in both age and humor in the late 1990s. He also said he often joked about living longer.
According to the Ministry of Health and Welfare, about 29% of Japan’s world’s most aging 125 million people are 65 or older. About 86,510 of them are over 100 years old, and half of them are 100 years old this year.
According to Guinness, anti-coronavirus measures mailed a certificate of record to another nursing home where she currently lives, and Sumiyama accepted her with tears of happiness.
Mari Yamaguchi
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