In 1975, Okinawa’s population census counted 37 people aged 100 or older among roughly 1.04 million residents. By 2022, the Japanese prefecture’s annual centenarian release listed 1,334, including 1,182 women and 152 men.
Set side by side, those numbers seem to offer mathematical confirmation of Okinawa’s romantic reputation as a place where people simply live longer. Ancient Chinese legends described islands of immortals somewhere across the eastern sea. Modern books and tourism campaigns gave the phrase a postcode.
The increase is real. It is also more complicated than a 36-fold multiplication suggests. The two totals came from different official counting systems, Japan aged dramatically over the same period, and the extraordinary survival of Okinawans born before the Second World War has not been reproduced by the generations behind them.
The modern story began with 37 people
A 2024 demographic review in the Journal of Internal Medicine traces Okinawa’s modern longevity story to the 1975 census. It enumerated 37 centenarians in a population of about 1.04 million, a prevalence of 35.5 per million. Across Japan as a whole, the census identified 568 centenarians among 111.25 million people, or 5.1 per million.
Okinawa’s rate was therefore about seven times the national rate. This was not merely a large number generated by a large elderly population. Something unusual had happened among the islanders who survived the first three quarters of the twentieth century.
The Okinawa Centenarian Study began that year after Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare checked early reports against birth certificates and other records. It became the longest continuously running population study of centenarians, eventually examining diet, movement, genetics, cognition, social life and psychological practices among thousands of participants.
The two headline totals are not identical measurements
The 37 in the title came from the five-yearly population census. The 1,334 came from a different series: Okinawa’s annual administrative count for Respect for the Aged Day.
In the prefecture’s official historical table, a centenarian is someone who will be at least 100 on 15 September of the relevant year. Under that definition, the 2022 total was 1,334. The same table gives 28 for 1975, comprising six men and 22 women, rather than the census total of 37.
Neither number is necessarily wrong. A census has its own reference date, while the annual list is assembled for an administrative purpose and includes adjustments around who reaches 100 during the reporting period. The 2024 demographic review notes that some annual records may include people still aged 99 who are expected to reach 100 before the fiscal year ends, while others may die between the list date and the census date.
The cleanest conclusion is therefore not that one perfectly consistent series rose from exactly 37 to exactly 1,334. It is that two official snapshots, taken with slightly different instruments, document the same enormous historical change. The annual series itself rose almost 48-fold between its 1975 and 2022 values.
Nearly nine in ten were women
Of Okinawa’s 1,334 centenarians in 2022, 1,182 were women and 152 were men. Women accounted for 88.6 per cent, which reasonably rounds to the title’s “nearly 89 per cent”.
That imbalance is striking, but it is not uniquely Okinawan. Japan’s 2022 national list contained 90,526 people aged 100 or older: 80,161 women and 10,365 men. Women made up almost exactly the same share nationally as they did in Okinawa.
Extreme old age is disproportionately female in many populations because women tend to experience lower mortality across much of adult life. Okinawa’s earlier cohorts still stand out, particularly its women, but the 2022 sex ratio does not reveal a separate island mechanism on its own.
Questions about the accuracy of very old ages are reasonable, especially where records have been disrupted by war. A 2008 validation study checked a subset of Okinawan centenarians through demographic tests and individual documentation and concluded that the registration system was reliable. Later demographers have continued to call for deeper validation, particularly for the oldest birth cohorts, so the correct position is confidence with continued scrutiny rather than either blind acceptance or blanket dismissal.
A count of centenarians is not a pure measure of longevity
A raw headcount depends on more than present-day health. It reflects how many people were born roughly a century earlier, how many survived childhood and war, who migrated, and the mortality experienced at every later age. A large cohort entering its hundreds can lift the total even if current younger adults are not becoming healthier.
Rates help, but they also need care. Okinawa’s 1,334 centenarians equalled 90.87 per 100,000 residents in 2022. That sounds exceptional, yet the official table placed the prefecture 25th among Japan’s 47 prefectures. In 1975, the comparable annual figure placed Okinawa first.
This apparent contradiction is the centre of the story. Okinawa still contained a remarkable concentration of people who had reached extreme old age, but the rest of Japan had caught up and in many prefectures moved ahead. The island’s absolute count could rise while its relative national position fell.
There are really two Okinawan longevity stories
Michel Poulain and Anne Herm, authors of the 2024 demographic review, found a dividing line around the Second World War. Older Okinawans, born before the war, showed an unusually favourable mortality pattern. For postwar generations, mortality at younger and middle ages was higher than on mainland Japan.
The loss of primacy became impossible to ignore in 2002, when newly released regional tables put Okinawa 26th for male life expectancy, down from fourth in 1995. The episode became known locally as “shock 26”. Female life expectancy remained more favourable, but its advantage over Japan as a whole also narrowed.
Researchers have proposed several contributors, including the westernisation of diet during and after the American occupation, less everyday movement with increased car use, changing alcohol consumption and the broader social conditions faced by postwar cohorts. The review presents these as plausible explanations around a complex demographic split, not as a controlled finding that assigns a percentage of the change to any one behaviour.
That distinction matters whenever Okinawa is sold as a lifestyle prescription. The lives of people born in the 1890s and 1900s cannot be recreated by adding one traditional food or habit to a twenty-first-century routine.
The 2022 total was a peak, not the latest number
“By 2022” can sound as though the total has continued climbing. It has not. The official series fell to 1,244 in 2023 and 1,184 in 2024. Okinawa’s September 2025 release counted 1,137 centenarians, including 1,035 women and 102 men.
A decline across several years does not make the earlier count fictional or prove that the population suddenly became less healthy. At such advanced ages, totals can move noticeably as particular birth cohorts pass through the threshold and annual deaths outnumber new centenarians.
It does, however, put the 1,334 in its proper place. It was the high point in the prefecture’s annual series, not a current count and not one step in an uninterrupted ascent.
Okinawa offers history, not one secret
Popular accounts often compress the island’s longevity into sweet potatoes, modest portions, close friendship groups and ikigai. Each may be worth studying. As Scandinavia Standard recently explored, even ikigai is less a grand life formula than a daily sense that getting up is worthwhile.
But no appealing list can explain the census, the sex gap, the shifting prefectural rankings and the prewar-postwar divide all at once. Those belong to demography, history and public health as much as to personal behaviour.
The most honest reading of the 37 and the 1,334 is still extraordinary. Okinawa produced a cohort whose survival to 100 far exceeded what its population size seemed to predict. The lesson is not that the islands defeated ageing. It is that one generation carried an unusual advantage for a very long time, and understanding why requires more care than turning their lives into a recipe.