Guinness World Records on Monday certified two Japanese sisters as the world’s oldest living identical twins at 107, coinciding with Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan.
Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama were born the third and fourth of 11 siblings on Shodoshima Island on Nov. 5, 1913.
They were separated after elementary school, when Kodama was sent to work as a maid in Oita on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu. She later married there, while Sumiyama remained on the island where they grew up and had her own family.
Photo: AP
The sisters later recalled their difficult younger days. Growing up, they said they were bullied because of prejudice against children of multiple births in Japan.
Busy with their own lives for decades, the sisters rarely met until they turned 70, when they started making pilgrimages together to Shikoku temples.
Sumiyama and Kodama were 107 years, 300 days old as of Sept. 1, breaking the previous record set by Japanese sisters Kin Narita and Gin Kanie at 107 years, 175 days, Guinness World Records Ltd said in a statement.
Their families told Guinness that the sisters often joked about outliving the earlier record holders, affectionately known as “Kin-san, Gin-san,” who attained idol-like status in the late 1990s for their age and humor.
About 29 percent of the population of 125 million in Japan, the world’s fastest-aging nation, are 65 or older, Japanese Ministry of Health and Welfare data show.
About 86,510 of them are centenarians — half of whom turned 100 this year, the data show.
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