A 113-year-old woman designated as Tokyo's oldest person does not reside at the apartment in Suginami Ward where she is registered to live and her whereabouts are unknown, the ward office has said. The woman, Fusa Furuya, was born in July 1897, according to the ward office and police. Ward officials visited her residence on Friday, following the discovery earlier in the week of mummified remains believed to be of a man regarded as Tokyo's oldest man at age 111 at his home in Adachi Ward. Furuya's 79-year-old daughter, who ward records show lives with her, said Furuya does not live there and has not been in touch with her, according to the ward office.
When the daughter moved by herself to the Tokyo ward from Chiba Prefecture in 1986, she transferred Furuya's residency record along with hers, according to the office. The daughter said she thought Furuya was living with her brother in Chiba.
The ward office said it has no records of Furuya ever receiving pensions. Her daughter keeps paying into Furuya's nursing-care and medical insurance, but Furuya has not used those services. Her daughter told reporters on Monday night she does not remember why she moved her mother's residence registration along with hers. "I kept paying premiums for my mother's medical insurance, thinking it would be good if she is still alive and can use it," she said, adding, "I don't know if she is dead or alive." The Suginami office and police are trying to contact Furuya's son and other relatives, but have yet to confirm her whereabouts. Sogen Kato — the man thought to have been Tokyo's oldest man — was most likely to have died around 1978, given that no newspapers more recent than one dated November 5, 1978, were found in the room where the corpse was found, based on his family's account. According to statistics compiled by the Health, Labour and Welfare Ministry, there were 40,399 centenarians in Japan as of September 2009. But recent developments in the capital suggest some of them might already be dead or unaccounted for.
A similar controversy involving centenarians emerged in 2005, when a 110-year-old woman in Tokyo's Arakawa Ward, who ranked 19th on the ministry's list of the 100 oldest citizens at the time, was found to have been missing for more than 40 years. The ministry stopped releasing the annual list the following year.