Japanese barber, 108, crowned world’s oldest

TOKYO: A 108-year-old Japanese woman has been certified the world´s oldest barber, Guinness World Records said -- and she has pledged to keep working until at least 110.

Shitsui Hakoishi, born in 1916, decided to become a barber at the age of 14 when a friend´s mother asked if she wanted to become an apprentice at a hair salon in Tokyo. She still holds her own scissors, and took part this week in a celebration ceremony reportedly attended by her two children, an 85-year-old daughter and an 81-year-old son.

“I´m very happy. My heart is full,” she said at the ceremony in Nakagawa, a town in the eastern region of Tochigi. Guinness World Records told AFP on Friday that the oldest barber category is split into male and female categories, but the oldest male barber -- Anthony Mancinelli, who worked in New York until at least 107 years old -- has now passed away.

Hakoishi married in her early 20s and opened a salon with her husband, but he was conscripted during World War II and died. The salon, which doubled as her family home, “was reduced to ashes during the bombing of Tokyo by the US military”, Guinness said in a statement.