Tomoji Tanabe

Who was Tomoji Tanabe?

Tomoji Tanabe was a Japanese supercentenarian and, at the time of his death at age 113, the oldest living man in the world for 2 years 146 days. Tanabe became the oldest man in Japan following the death of Nijiro Tokuda, who was 111 at the time, on 12 June 2006. Upon the death of 115-year-old Emiliano Mercado del Toro on 24 January 2007, Tanabe assumed the title of the man with the oldest validated date of birth in the world. He was the last surviving man verified to have been born in 1895.

Tanabe was the seventh-oldest validated person in the world and the third-oldest in Japan. In spite of being the youngest "oldest living man" since 1999 at his title accession in January 2007, at the time of his death, Tanabe ranked in eighth place among the oldest verified undisputed men ever and was just one day away from tying American supercentenarian, Johnson Parks, at seventh place.