Shigechiyo Izumi
Biography. Shigechiyo's parents died when he was 6 months old, and he was adopted by his grandfather Katsuzumi Izumi in February 1866. "Guinness World Records" found a document attesting that he was 24 years old in 1889 when he was exempted from military service to deal with sugar cane fields. Izumi drank brown sugar "shōchū" (a Japanese alcoholic beverage often distilled from barley or rice), and took up smoking at age 70. Izumi's personal physician strongly advised him against drinking shōchū as his kidneys were not strong enough to process shōchū in his advanced age, but  Izumi went on to say: "Without shōchū there would be no pleasure in life. I would rather die than give up drinking." He retired from sugar cane farming in 1970. Death and uncertainty over age. After a brief hospitalization, Izumi died of pneumonia at 21:15 JST on 21 February 1986. He was one of only two people (the other being Jeanne Calment) verified to have lived past their 120th birthday, although subsequent research has discounted this claim. In April 1987, 14 months after Izumi's death, the Department of Epidemiology at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology reported that research  into Izumi's family registration records indicated he might have been 105 when he died. The 2011 "Guinness World Records" book states that the birth certificate submitted as evidence might have actually belonged to his older brother, who died at a young age, and the family may have re-used "Shigechiyo" as a necronym. With the closing of the "Guinness World Record Museum" in Niagara Falls, ON in September 2020, the display and reproduction of Izumi now resides in a private collection in Canada. The oldest undisputed case of male longevity is Jiroemon Kimura, also from Japan, who died at  age 116 years and 54 days.