TOKYO (AP) — Meet the world’s oldest female barber: She is 108 but the slender, white-haired Japanese woman has no plans to retire anytime soon.
Shitsui Hakoishi says the formal recognition by the Guinness World Records this week brought her much joy — other than her satisfied customers, that is.
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 died in the meantime, leaving Hakoishi as the only holder of the record.
Her career has spanned nine decades and she says she owes it all to her customers.
“I could come this far only because of my customers,” Hakoishi told a televised news conference Wednesday at a gymnasium in her hometown of Nakagawa in the Tochigi prefecture, northeast of Tokyo. “I’m overwhelmed and filled with joy.”
Born on Nov. 10, 1916, to a family of farmers in Nakagawa, 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 license 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.
Hakoishi lost her salon in the deadly March 10, 1945 U.S. 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 her hometown of Nakagawa. Rihatsu is Japanese for barber.
She says she isn’t ready to put away her scissors.
“I am turning 109 this year, so I will keep going until I reach 110,” she said and smiled confidently.