Japanese barber, 108, crowned world’s oldest

A 108-year-old Japanese woman has been certified the world’s oldest barber, Guinness World Records said – and she has pledged to keep working until at least 110.

Shitsui Hakoishi, born in 1916, decided to become a barber at the age of 14 when a friend’s mother asked if she wanted to become an apprentice at a hair salon in Tokyo.

She still holds her own scissors, and took part this week in a celebration ceremony reportedly attended by her two children, an 85-year-old daughter and an 81-year-old son.

“I’m very happy. My heart is full,” she said at the ceremony in Nakagawa, a town in the eastern region of Tochigi.

Guinness World Records told reporters on Friday that the oldest barber category is split into male and female categories, but the oldest male barber – Anthony Mancinelli, who worked in New York until at least 107 years old – has now passed away.

Hakoishi married in her early 20s and opened a salon with her husband, but he was conscripted during World War II and died.

The salon, which doubled as her family home, “was reduced to ashes during the bombing of Tokyo by the US military,” Guinness said in a statement.

Hakoishi and her children survived, however, as they had evacuated to her hometown of Nakagawa.

Several years after the war, Hakoishi opened a new salon in Nakagawa, where she works to this day and where old clients sometimes ring up to book a haircut.

While she now lives in a care home, she is still able to look after herself.

She was one of the Tokyo Olympics torchbearers in 2021, walking around 200 metres, according to regional broadcaster Tochigi TV.

Asked about her future goals, she said that she turns 109 this year but wants to “work hard until 110.”

Earlier, the world’s oldest person, Japanese woman Tomiko Itooka died aged 116.

Itooka, who had four children and five grandchildren, died on Dec.29, 2024 at a nursing home where she resided since 2019, the southern city’s mayor said in a statement.

She was born on May 23, 1908 in the commercial hub of Osaka, near Ashiya – four months before the Ford Model T was launched in the United States.

Itooka was recognised as the oldest person in the world after the August 2024 death of Spain’s Maria Branyas Morera at age 117.