Sakari Momoi, the world's oldest man, lived to see the start and end of two world wars, a man walk on the moon and the birth of the Internet age. Momoi died of kidney failure in a Tokyo home care facility on Sunday. He was 112.
“We heard from his family ... that his health worsened one or two weeks ago,” a local official told Agence France-Presse.
Born in 1903 in Fukushima, Momoi went on to become a high school principal, marry and have five children. Momoi enjoyed reading -- Chinese poetry in particular -- and traveling around Japan with his late wife, according to Guinness World Records.
The supercentenarian, who was recognized by Guiness as the world's oldest man last August, previously said he owed his longevity to healthy eating and getting plenty of sleep.
Momoi had said at his Guinness ceremony that he wanted to live for two more years. "To put Mr Momoi’s age into perspective, he was born before the Wright brothers made their first powered flight, before Henry Ford produced his first car, and before the birth of author George Orwell and jazz legends Bix Beiderbeck and Fats Waller," Guinness World Records Editor-in-Chief Craig Glenday said during Momoi's official certificate presentation on his birthday in February. "Back in 1903, the world had only just staged the second ever modern Olympic Games and Albert Einstein was yet to publish his theory of Special Relativity."
Guiness has not designated a new "world's oldest man," though it's believed to be another Japanese man, Yasutaro Koide. Koide, born in March 1903, is a little more than a month younger than Momoi.
As the AFP noted, the Japanese are known for their longevity, with roughly a quarter of its population of 128 million over the age of 65.
The "world's oldest living person" title is still held by American Susannah Mushatt Jones, who turned 116 years old Monday. Born in Alabama on July 6, 1899, Jones now lives in Brooklyn and has attributed her endurance to not drinking or smoking, and surrounding herself with "positive energy," ABC New York reported.
"That's the key to long life and happiness," Jones said.
Reuters contributed to this report.
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