The world's oldest man died at the age of 113 years and 179 days on Sunday at his home in Ashoro, Japan.
Masazo Nonaka's family discovered his body at about 1.30 a.m., Kyodo News reported. Nonaka had been in good health and died peacefully, his granddaughter Yuko told record-keeping company Guinness World Records.
Read more: Did the world's oldest person ever lie about her age? A Russian mathematician thinks so
Born in Ashoro on July 25, 1905—the year Las Vegas was settled and Albert Einstein proposed his special theory of relativity—Nonaka saw two world wars, the discovery of penicillin, the invention of the ballpoint pen and the rise of the internet.
Nonaka became the world's oldest man after Francisco Nuñez Olivera—the previous record holder—died on 29 January 2018, at the age of 113 years, Guinness World Records reported.
Nonaka tucked in to a large celebration cake when his milestone was certified in April 2018, the Associated Press reported at the time.
Fond of sweets, samurai dramas and regular dips in his family's hot springs inn, Nonaka also said he loves to watch sumo wrestling.
In his later years, Nonaka spent most of his time in a wheelchair. But he was still able to move the chair around himself, his family said.
He spent much of his younger life running the family inn, which was opened more than a century ago. His granddaughter now manages the property according to Guinness World Records.
"We feel shocked at the loss of this big figure," she told Kyodo News Sunday. "His last moments were calm. He passed away without causing our family any fuss at all."
"I had many quarrels with him, but we had enjoyed being together," she added. "I'm filled with feelings of gratitude."
As of last April, Nonaka had outlived his seven siblings, two of his five children and his wife, the Associated Press reported.
Guinness World Records tweeted a message of condolence for the super-centenarian Monday. "Guinness World Records is saddened to learn of the death of Masazo Nonaka. Aged 113, Masazo held the title of oldest living man from April 2018 to his passing yesterday at his home in Japan," the company wrote.
The record-keeper is yet to confirm Nonaka's successor.
The oldest person ever certified by Guinness World Records was Jeanne Calment, who died in 1997 at the age of 122. In a recent paper, a researcher disputed her claim and suggested the woman who died that year was actually Yvonne Calment, Jeanne's daughter.
But experts refuted Russian mathematician Nikolay Zak's claim. One of the scientists that verified her age, Jean-Marie Robine, told Le Parisien, "All of this is incredibly shaky and rests on nothing."
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