The world's oldest person, a 117-year-old Japanese woman, has died.
Nabi Tajima died in a hospital Saturday evening in the town of Kikai in southern Japan, town official Susumu Yoshiyuki said. She had been hospitalized since January.
This Sept. 2015 photo shows Nabi Tajima, the world's oldest person, a 117-year-old Japanese woman. Tajima died of old age, at 117, in a hospital Saturday evening, April 21, 2018, in the town of Kikai in southern Japan, town official Susumu Yoshiyuki confirmed. She had been hospitalized since January. (Kikai Town/Kyodo News via AP)
Tajima, born on Aug. 4, 1900, was the last known person born in the 19th century. She raised seven sons and two daughters and reportedly had more than 160 descendants, including great-great-great grandchildren.
She became the world's oldest person after the death in September of Violet Brown of Jamaica, also at the age of 117. Video on Japanese television showed Tajima moving her hands to the beat of music played on traditional Japanese instruments at a ceremony to mark the achievement.
Tajima's town of Kikai is a small island of about 7,000 people halfway between Okinawa and Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan's four main islands.
The U.S.-based Gerontology Research Group says that another Japanese woman, Chiyo Miyako, is now the world's oldest person. Miyako lives in Kanagawa prefecture, south of Tokyo, and turns 117 on May 2.
Guinness World Records certified 112-year-old Masazo Nonaka of northern Japan as the world's oldest man earlier this month, and was planning to recognize Tajima as the world's oldest person.
TOKYO (AP) — Juro Kara, who helped shape Japan’s postwar avant-garde theater, defiantly yet playfully transforming the essence of Kabuki aesthetics into modern storytelling, has died. He was 84.
The playwright, director and troupe leader died late Saturday from a blood clot in the brain after he collapsed at home and was rushed to a Tokyo hospital on May 1, his theater group Karagumi said in a statement on Sunday.
Kara, whose real name was Yoshihide Otsuru, rose to stardom in the so-called Japanese underground movement of the 1960s known as “un-gura,” characterized by a kitsch rebellious style also found in his contemporaries Shuji Terayama and Tadashi Suzuki.
Kara’s colorful shows, often in makeshift tents evocative of a traveling circus, rejected the established theatrical modes then dominating modernizing Japan that were mostly Western, middle class and well-behaved.
His plays, such as "Koshimaki Osen,” were characterized by a raw energetic physicality, blatantly devoid of any pretense at naturalism.
Kara once compared his approach to “a womb covered in blood.” His theater came to be known as “the red tent." A wandering group would put on his shows wherever the tents went up, most famously in a spot near a shrine in Shinjuku in downtown Tokyo.
Audiences found themselves immersed in otherworldly, dreamlike settings. The flashy posters that artist Tadanori Yokoo often created for Kara’s works exemplified that signature pop surrealist style.
Kara’s group is still active today, performing shows that carry on his legacy. His theater also served as a breeding ground for some of Japan’s top actors, including Kaoru Kobayashi and the late Jinpachi Nezu.
Born in Tokyo, Kara majored in theater at Meiji University in Tokyo, which boasts an extensive archive of Kara’s works.
In 1983, Kara won the prestigious Akutagawa Award for new writers for his novel “Letters from Sagawa.” He also acted in various films, often in bit character roles, including “Demon Pond,” directed by Masahiro Shinoda.
Funeral arrangements weren't set but will be for family and friends, Karagumi said. Kara is survived by his wife Michiko, sons Gitan Otsuru and Sasuke Otsuru, and daughter Minion Otsuru, all actors.
Yuri Kageyama is on X: https://twitter.com/yurikageyama
Juro Kara speaks during a press conference in Osaka, western Japan in March, 2005 after he was appointed as a guest professor at a university. The playwright, director and troupe leader died late Saturday from a blood clot in the brain after he collapsed at home and was rushed to a Tokyo hospital on May 1, his theater group Karagumi said in a statement on Sunday, May 5, 2024. He was 84. (Kyodo News via AP)
Juro Kara speaks during a press conference in Osaka, western Japan in March, 2005 after he was appointed as a guest professor at a university. The playwright, director and troupe leader died late Saturday from a blood clot in the brain after he collapsed at home and was rushed to a Tokyo hospital on May 1, his theater group Karagumi said in a statement on Sunday, May 5, 2024. He was 84. (Kyodo News via AP)
