108-year-old Japanese woman named as world's oldest female barber

Nakagawa / Japan: The world’s oldest female barber working in her salon in Nakagawa, a town in Japan’s Tochigi prefecture, says she has no plans to retire.

Guinness World Records officially recognized 108-year-old Shitsui Hakoishi as the world’s oldest female barber this week.

Hakoishi in her work clothes told reporters that she was ‘overwhelmed by happiness’, adding ‘I’m grateful to everyone in the community’ and thanked her parents for her strong genes.

Born on 10 November 1916 in a village known back then as Ouchi, Shitsui Hakoishi moved to Tokyo alone at age 14 and became an apprentice barber.

Just as her colleagues went out to socialize after work, Shitsui Hakoishi spent time secretly perfecting her skill late into the night to ‘catch up with, and surpass, my senior apprentices as quickly as possible’.

Shortly before her 20 th birthday in 1936 she earned her barber’s licence and opened her salon three years later with her husband Jiro.

During the war her salon was destroyed in air raid that made her to return to Nakagawa.

Her husband who had been drafted into the Imperial Japanese Army, however, did not return from war, and she received no official confirmation of his death until 1953.

Hakoishi who was left with the responsibility of raising their two children, decided to open a one-seat barber shop in Nakagawa that year.

She believes her ‘extraordinary longevity’ has to do with exercises she has been performing every morning since she turned 70.

She became a torchbearer at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, thanks to the strict régime.

Hakoishi, who limited her work to handful of regular customers due to a nagging knee pain, said ‘Life has been full of hardship since I was young’ adding ‘but I’m truly happy’