The world’s oldest person died in a nursing home in Osaka, Japan on Wednesday morning, the same town in which she was born in 1898.  Misao Okawa and her family had just celebrated her 117th birthday on 5 March.

The staff at the nursing home said Misao had lost her appetite ten days ago, and stopped breathing this morning.  Okawa was the mother of three, grandmother of four, and great-grandmother of six.  She was one of only a handful of people still alive who had been born in the 19th century.

When Misao was born, it was still five years before the Wright Brothers would make the first powered flight in America.  Much of Japan in 1898 was much the same as it had been in the previous few centuries.  But in cities like Osaka, things were changing.  It was the era of the Emperor Meiji, after the military dictatorship of the Shoguns had fizzled out and international influences were coming in. 

The daughter of a kimono maker witnessed a lot of history.  Misao was already a teenager when World War I broke out.  She married in 1919 and was widowed by 1931.  She watched her devastated country climb out of the pit of its leaders’ making after World War II, to become a world economic powerhouse.  Okawa was already a senior citizen in her 70s at the time of the first moon landing.

The world’s oldest person is now believed to be American Gertrude Weaver, who is reportedly 116 years old.  But Japan hasn’t been left behind.  The world’s oldest man is Sakari Momoi, who at 112 years old lives in Saitama outside Tokyo.