116 year old Japanese man now the last male alive that was born in the 19th century

With the death in Barbados on Thursday of James Emmanuel ''Doc'' Sisnett, at the age of 113 years and 90 days, Jiroemon Kimura, of Japan, has become the last man alive to have been born in the 19th century.

Literally the last man. There are, according to the Gerontolgy Research Group at UCLA, 21 women born before New Year's Day, 1901, who are still with us, most of them living in the United States or Japan, with others in Europe and Canada.

But while the females born in the reign of Queen Victoria strongly outnumber him, Mr Kimura, born on April 19, 1897, has one record the girls can't match - not just yet, anyway. At 116, the ''supercentenarian'' is the oldest human on the planet.

Supercentenarians are people who have lived past their 110th birthday, and while it's estimated that there may be 200 or 300 living today, only 60-odd have been verified by reliable birth records. Of them only two, Mr Kimura and Japanese woman Misao Okawa, are known to be still living aged 115 or older.

Being born in the year 30 of the Meiji period, Mr Kimura has lived in the reigns of four emperors, and through the premierships of 61 Japanese prime ministers, from Matsukata Masayoshi to Shinzo Abe.

Mr Kimura retired in 1962 aged 65, after working for 45 years in the Japanese post office. He now lives in Kyō¯tango, Kyoto Prefecture, with his eldest son's widow, 83, and his grandson's widow, 59, and attributes his long life to eating small portions of food, and admits to spending most of his time ''in bed''.