Japanese woman, 108, named the world’s oldest female barber
She was presented with an official certificate from Guinness World Records on Wednesday.
A 108-year-old Japanese woman has been named the world’s oldest female barber.
Shitsui Hakoishi said the formal recognition by the Guinness World Records this week brought her much joy but added that she has no plans to retire.
She was presented with an official certificate from the international franchise on Wednesday.
Guinness World Records has a separate category for male barbers but the man who was certified at age 107 in 2018, Anthony Mancinelli of the United States, has since died, leaving Ms Hakoishi as the only holder of the record.
“I could come this far only because of my customers,” Ms Hakoishi told a news conference on Wednesday in her home town of Nakagawa in the Tochigi prefecture, northeast of Tokyo.
“I’m overwhelmed and filled with joy.”
Born on November 10 1916, to a family of farmers in Nakagawa, Ms Hakoishi decided to become a barber at age 14 and moved to Tokyo, where she honed her craft first as an apprentice.
She got her barber’s licence at 20 and opened a salon together with her husband. They had two children before he was killed in the Japan-China war that broke out in 1937.
Ms Hakoishi lost her salon in the deadly March 10 1945 US firebombing of Tokyo.
Before that, she and her children were evacuated elsewhere in the Tochigi prefecture, according to the Guinness website.
It took her eight more years before she opened a salon again, calling it Rihatsu Hakoishi, in Nakagawa. Rihatsu is Japanese for barber.
She says she is not ready to put away her scissors.
“I am turning 109 this year, so I will keep going until I reach 110,” she said.
