Sadayoshi Tanabe

Sadayoshi Tanabe (Kyūjitai: 田邊 定義; Shinjitai: 田辺 定義; ) (October 20, 1888 – January 18, 2000) was an academic and bibliographer born in Tari, Nichinan, Tottori Prefecture, Japan. Tanabe started his career as a municipal worker for the city of Kure in Hiroshima Prefecture. He later worked at the Tokyo Institute of Municipal Research (東京市政調査会, Tōkyō Shisei Chōsakai), for which he later became secretary. Tanabe helped establish an exchange program with the University of Michigan, the Center for Japanese Studies, founded in Okayama Prefecture in 1950. Tanabe, after a long career in municipal government, recorded an extensive oral history with interviewer Suruki Akagi in 1971. Tanabe related his experiences in the local governance of Japan, which spanned much of the Shōwa period (1926 – 1989).

Status as supercentenarian

Tanabe was also a supercentenarian and Japan's oldest living man, and was thought to be the world's oldest validated man at the time of his death, having reached age 111, although John Painter has since been validated as being a month older, meaning that Tanabe was the second oldest living man at the time of his death.