05 May,2010 07:06 AM IST | | Agencies
Just a week before her 115th birthday, the oldest person in the world has died on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa.
Kama Chinen was born on May 10, 1895, living to see three different centuries. She died on Sunday in a care home, although the details of her death have not been released by her family.
Okinawa has a reputation for its long-lived residents, put down to the local diet of green tea, miso soup, vegetables, rice and fresh fish.
Kama had been the world's oldest person since September 2009, when 115-year-old Gertrude Baines died in Los Angeles.
The title of oldest human now passes to French woman Eugenie Blanchard (114), who was born in February 1896.
