More on Japanese Life Spans

Now that the government has started taking a closer look, it finds that there are some 77,000 people 120 years old or older in its records and 884 who would be 150 or older.

To put that in perspective, the longgest-lived human for whom there is substantial documentation is Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. The longest-lived man was Christian Mortensen, who died in 1998 at 115.

It's becmoing increasingly clear that a large number of Japanese people have hid the deaths of elderly realtives to continue receiving their pensions.