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Plot thickens in Japan’s oldest person mystery

A 113-year-old woman listed as Tokyo’s oldest person has gone missing, officials said on Tuesday, days after the city’s oldest man was found dead and mummified, The Telegraph reports.

Fusa Furuya, born in July, 1897, does not live at the address in Japan’s capital where she is registered and her whereabouts are unknown, officials said.

News of her disappearance surfaced days after the discovery that Tokyo’s oldest man, who would have been 111 years old,had actually been dead for three decades.

Officials admitted that they had not personally contacted the two people in decades, despite their listing as the longest-living in the capital.

Officials only learned that the man was dead, and Mrs Furuya missing, when they began updating their records ahead of a holiday in honour of the elderly that is to be observed next month.

Officials visited Mrs Furuya’s flat last Friday, but her 79-year-old daughter said she has never lived there.

The daughter, whose name was not disclosed, told officials she was not aware of her mother’s registration at that address and said she thought her mother was just outside Tokyo with her younger brother, from whom .

But when officials checked that address, they found a vacant lot.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .