The world's oldest person, Kamato Hongo, died in Japan Friday at the age of 116.

Hongo died in a hospital in the southern Kagoshima City of the Kagoshima Prefecture. She was born in 1887 and just celebrated her116 birthday in September.

Hongo was known for her routine of sleeping for two consecutivedays and then staying awake for the next two days.

Shochu, a Japanese distilled for which Kagoshima Prefecture is famous, and brown sugar were Hongo's favorites. She attributed herlongevity to working in sugar cane fields.

With Hongo's death, Mitoyo Kawate, 114, of the city of Hiroshima, became the oldest person in Japan, according to the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.

The Japanese government statistics showed, by the end of last year, the average life-span for Japanese female was 85.23 years old, and for male, 78.32 years old. The number of Japanese aged 65or older has reached a record-high 24.31 million in September, or roughly one out of every five citizens.

(People's Daily   November 1, 2003)