Jokichi Ikarashi

Jokichi Ikarashi (五十嵐 丈吉; Ikarashi Jōkichi; 26 January 1902 – 23 July 2013) was a Japanese farmer and supercentenarian, and the oldest man ever from Niigata Prefecture before 31 August 2018, when Chitetsu Watanabe surpassed his age and, at the time of his death, the oldest living Japanese man and the world's second-oldest living man.

Biography

Ikarashi was born on 26 January 1902 in Sanjo, Niigata, as the eldest of six children in a farmer family and worked as a rice farmer after graduating from elementary school to age 50–60, when he retired in order to take care of his wife, who was ill and died at age 68 in 1973, and their grandchildren, and later grew chrysanthemums until age 91 when he fall from a pine tree and broke his left foot, but did not otherwise suffer from any severe injury or illness, and did not either drink alcohol and smoke (and believed that as the secret to a long life). On his 110th birthday in late-January 2012, Ikarashi said jokingly that he "forgot to die" and wanted to live at least fifteen years longer. However, he was mostly bedridden and only able to eat liquid food during his time as a supercentenarian.

Ikarashi died of pneumonia at 11:06am on 23 July 2013 at age 111 years, 178 days, and was the oldest living Japanese man for almost six weeks after 116-year-old Jiroemon Kimura's death the night of 12 June, and was believed to be the world's oldest living man after the 135 days older Californian man James McCoubrey's death on 5 July. However, just two days after Ikarashi's death, the oldest living man was officially confirmed to be 112-year-old Spanish-born American Salustiano Sánchez, who died on 13 September the same year (coincidencially on the same day as McCoubrey would have turned 112). Ikarashi was succeeded as Japan's oldest living man by Sakari Momoi.