The oldest living man in the world, 113-year-old Masazo Nonaka, died on Sunday.
Nonaka passed away peacefully in his home on Japan‘s northern main island, Hokkaido, according to a report by The Guardian. He died of natural causes in his sleep in the early hours of the morning. Nonaka reportedly passed in an inn in Ashoro, which his family has run for four generations.
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Nonaka’s family described him as light-hearted and easy to please. He loved eating sweets and watching sumo wrestling, and spent much of his retirement following the sport on TV. His granddaughter, Yuko, now runs the family inn. She spoke to local reporters from Kyodo News.
“We feel shocked at the loss of this big figure,” she said. “He was as usual yesterday and passed away without causing our family any fuss at all.”
Nonaka was born on July 25, 1905. He survived two world wars, the rise and fall of many huge global powers and systems, and still kept positive. He reportedly grew up in a large family, with six brothers and one sister. He himself took over the inn from his parents when he grew up.
Nonaka married in 1931, and had five children with his wife. He outlived her, as well as three of his kids. It is unclear how many grandchildren or great-grandchildren Nonaka got to meet.
Japan has reportedly been found to have one of the highest life expectancies in the world. The country has been on record as having the oldest person on earth living there before. In 2013, the longest-living man in recorded history died in Japan — Jiroemon Kimura, who was 116. He passed away shortly after his last birthday.
Kimura fell just short of the longest-living person in recorded history, a woman named Jeanne Louis Calament. Calament died in France at the age of 122 in 1997. She holds a place in the Guinness World Records.
Nonaka just took over the title of the oldest living man last year, after the death of Francisco Nunez Olivera of Spain. Nonaka received recognition from Guinness at the time.
The study of life expectancy has evolved a lot in recent years, with scientist coming to understand the intricate link of dietary, environmental and social factors that play a role. National Geographic Fellow Dan Buettner has identified what he calls “Blue Zones” across the world, where local populations tend to live much longer than the rest of the globe on average.
These include the Okinawa Prefecture, which is in southern Japan, far from Nonaka’s home. Other “Blue Zones” exist in northern Italy, Costa Rica, Greece and even California.
