THE WORLD'S OLDEST TWIN JAPANESE SISTERS

 

Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama were born on November 5, 1913, on the island of Shodoshima, western Japan, as the third and fourth of 11 siblings. These two Japanese sisters have been certified as the world's oldest living identical twins, at the age of 107, in Guinness World Records, a national holiday in Japan declared in honor of Older's Day. They both dropped out of elementary school, when Kodama was sent to work as a maid in Oita in Kyushu, Japan's southernmost main island. They later married there, while Sumiyama lived on the island where he grew up and had a family of his own. Growing up, he said that he was bullied in Japan because of his prejudice against multiple births. Busy in their lives for decades, the sisters rarely met until the age of 70, when they began making pilgrimages to some of the 88 Shikoku shrines and rejoicing. Guinness World Records Ltd said in a statement that Sumiyama and Kodama were 107 years and 300 days old as of September 1, breaking the previous record set by famous Japanese sisters Kin Narita and Jin Kani at 107 years and 175 days. Japan has about 29% of its population of 125 million people 65 years of age or older. About 86,510 of them date back to the century - half of whom turn 100 this year. Due to anti-coronavirus measures, his certificates of record were sent to the various nursing homes where he now lives, and Sumiyama accepted him with tears of joy, according to Guinness.