The Centenarian Century

For the first time in history, Japan is home to more than 100,000 centenarians. And the increase over the past 50-plus years has been remarkable.

In 1963, Japan recorded 153 people who were at least 100 years old. This week, that number reached 107,677. Nearly 88 percent are women, and more than 54,000 people are being recognized for reaching their 100th birthday this year.

Think about that for a moment: A Japanese child born in 1926 arrived in a world before television became part of daily life, before antibiotics transformed medicine, before commercial aviation became commonplace, and decades before computers entered our homes. Those who reached adulthood lived through the Second World War and the rebuilding of Japan that followed. They watched automobiles become commonplace, humans walk on the moon, the internet connect the planet, and phones shrink from objects attached to walls into tiny computers carried in our pockets.

And more than 100,000 of them are still here.

Among them is Hikaru Katō, now 112 and Japan's oldest living man. Born in 1914, Katō worked for Japan's Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry and served during World War II. After returning home in 1946, he resumed his government work and eventually retired at 59.

Katō taught pottery classes in his community well into his 90s. He wrote an autobiography. And until he was 109 years old, he continued sending letters to local newspapers recounting his wartime experiences and expressing his hope that future generations would never experience war again.

Today he lives in a care facility, where he continues to exercise and do many of the ordinary tasks of daily life for himself.

Psalm 92 reminds us that aging can be beautiful when we are anchored in our faith:

The righteous will flourish like a palm tree,

    they will grow like a cedar of Lebanon;

planted in the house of the Lord,

    they will flourish in the courts of our God.

They will still bear fruit in old age,

    they will stay fresh and green,

proclaiming, “The Lord is upright;

    he is my Rock, and there is no wickedness in him."

Japan's new record brings complicated questions: Its population is shrinking, its birth rate remains low, and caring for an increasingly elderly society will demand significant resources. Longevity carries both gifts and responsibilities. Japanese officials credit improvements in nutrition, living conditions, and medical care with helping more people reach advanced ages.

And tucked inside those enormous demographic numbers are 107,677 individual lives.

None of us knows how many years we will be given. Scripture seems much less interested in teaching us to count toward a particular age than in asking what we will do with the days entrusted to us.

Psalm 92 offers a beautiful image: even in old age, still bearing fruit.

Perhaps that is a better measure of a life than the number of candles on the cake. At 30 or 60 or 90 or 112, there may still be encouragement to offer, wisdom to share, someone to love, a wrong to help make right, a prayer to pray, a letter to write.

So maybe the question is not, How many years do I have left?

Instead it is this: For however many years God gives me, what fruit might I still have left to bear?