108-year-old Shitsui Hakoishi has been recognised as the oldest female barber in the world.
According to Independent, a white-haired, slender Japanese woman received her official certificate of the world's oldest female barber by Guinness World Records on Wednesday, March 5, 2025.
Hakoishi told a televised news conference at a gymnasium in her hometown of Nakagawa in Tochigi prefecture, Tokyo, “I could come this far only because of my customers. I’m overwhelmed and filled with joy."
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She has been working as a barber for the past nine decades, and she has no plans of putting away her scissors soon, as she said, “I am turning 109 this year, so I will keep going until I reach 110.”
Hakoishi was born into a farming family in Nakagawa on November 10, 1916. At the age of 14, she decided to abandon the family tradition and pursue barbering.
She then moved to Tokyo and worked with a barber to learn the skills and got her barber's license at the age of 20.
The mother of two opened her first shop with her husband, who was killed in 1937 during the war between Japan and China, but lost it in the deadly March 10, 1945 US firebombing of Tokyo.
It took Hakoishi eight years to finally open her saloon again in her hometown of Nakagawa and name it Rihatsu Hakoishi. Since then, she has been dedicatedly working as a barber.
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