Soul-searching for Tokyo as its oldest woman goes missing

JAPANESE authorities have admitted they've lost track of a 113-year-old woman listed as Tokyo's oldest, days after police searched the home of the city's official oldest man - only to find his long-dead, mummified body.

Officials launched a search this week for Fusa Furuya, born in July 1897 and listed as Tokyo's oldest citizen, after it emerged her whereabouts are unknown.

Several other celebrated centenarians are also unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping and follow-up in a country that prides itself in its number of long-lived citizens but also frets about an unravelling of traditional family ties.

Officials updating their records ahead of a holiday next month honouring the elderly found that Mrs Furuya does not live at the address where she is registered, said Hiroshi Sugimoto, an official in Tokyo's Suginami ward.

Mrs Furuya's 79-year-old daughter, whose name was not disclosed, told officials she was not aware of her mother's registration at that address and said she thought her mother was with her younger brother, with whom she has lost touch. But that address just outside Tokyo turned out to be incorrect.

Police are also interviewing the brother and another daughter, but still have not been able to locate Mrs Furuya.

The disappearance follows last week's grisly discovery — also by officials updating the most-elderly list — that the man listed as Tokyo's oldest male, who would have been 111 years old, had actually been dead for more than 30 years and his decayed body was still in his home.

Police are investigating the family of Sogen Kato for alleged abandonment and fraudently claiming his pension money. Mr Kato is believed to have died about 32 years ago, when his family said he retreated to his bedroom, wanting to be a living Buddha.

Officials said they had not personally contacted Mrs Furuya or Mr Kato for decades.

Authorities are also looking for a 106-year-old man who is missing in Nagoya, central Japan, Kyodo News agency reported. The Asahi newspaper said three more centenarians were unaccounted for in Tokyo.

Health and welfare minister Akira Nagatsuma urged officials to find a better way to monitor the elderly.

He said: "It is important for public offices to check up on them — where and how they are — and follow through all the way."

But local officials say it is hard to keep track because families are often reluctant to receive official visits. Many also send elderly relatives to nursing homes without doing the paperwork.

"It's shocking that even relatives don't know if their parents are alive or dead," said Professor Yoshinori Hiroi of Chiba University, an expert on public welfare.

"These cases are typical examples of thinning relationship among families and neighbours in Japan today."

LONGER LIVES?

The missing elderly people could cast doubt on the exact number of centenarians in Japan, a figure that has been rising for decades.

Officially, Japan has 40,399 people aged 100 or older, including 4,800 in Tokyo, according to an annual health ministry report last year marking the 21 September holiday for the elderly.

Each centenarian receives a letter and a gift from a local government office, usually by mail.

Japan has some of the longest-lived people in the world. In 2009, Japanese women could expect to live, on average, a record 86.4 years — up almost five months from the previous year — followed by women in Hong Kong and France.