Meet the world’s oldest identical twins alive

The Guinness World Records has now recognised two Japanese sisters who are now certified as the world’s oldest living identical twins at 107 years and 300 days. This came on the occasion of Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan. The sisters – Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama – were born on […]

The Guinness World Records has now recognised two Japanese sisters who are now certified as the world’s oldest living identical twins at 107 years and 300 days. This came on the occasion of Respect for the Aged Day, a national holiday in Japan.

The sisters – Umeno Sumiyama and Koume Kodama – were born on Shodoshima Island in western Japan on November 5, 1913, into a large family of 13.

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However, the twin sisters started living apart from a young age. When the twins finished elementary school, Koume left the island to help her uncle in Oita on Japan’s southern main island of Kyushu. She was later married to someone from Kyushu.

Umeno, on the other hand, married someone who lived on Shodo Island and remained there with her own family, a blog post on Guinness World Records website read.

According to their family members, the twins are both sociable and positive and hardly worry about things.

The twins lived their own lives for decades and rarely met until they turned 70 years old when they started making pilgrimages together to some of the 88 Shikoku temples.

Sumiyama and Kodama were 107 years and 300 days old as of September 1. They broke the previous record set by famous Japanese sisters Kin Narita and Gin Kanie at 107 years and 175 days, Guinness World Records said in a statement.