107-yr-old woman who lived through 4 Japanese eras hopes for peace in the 5th

MAEBASHI -- A woman born in the 44th year of Meiji (1911) and will turn 108 on May 1 expressed her hope that Japan's next era Reiwa, her fifth, will be a peaceful one.

The current Heisei era will end as Emperor Akihito abdicates on April 30, and Reiwa will begin the following day when Crown Prince Naruhito ascends to the Imperial Throne.

Miya Itoi, who currently lives in a care home for the aged in the Gunma prefectural capital Maebashi, northwest of Tokyo, was born in the northeastern Iwate Prefecture. She went to a local girls' school and entered what is now Kawamura Gakuen Women's University in Tokyo. Upon graduation, she worked as a home economics teacher at a girl's school in the northeastern Japan prefecture of Fukushima, where her older brother lived.

She married a man from Gunma Prefecture who worked for the military, and settled in the former Japanese puppet state in Manchuria, northeastern China. The couple did not get directly involved in World War II, but returned to Japan as the country's military situation deteriorated.

After the war, Itoi, who liked to cook, began teaching young women in Gunma to prepare meals amid supply shortages. Her lessons later turned into a cooking class approved by the prefectural governor. She continued the courses until she was 85, in the hope that her students could find happiness through cooking.

The woman says the secret of longevity is willpower. According to a worker at the day care facility Itoi goes to, she has a positive personality and sometimes advises younger people to "do your best" in a teacher-like way. Itoi has never had a serious illness and is on almost no medication. She loves sweets including chocolate and ice cream, and can hold her dishes and eat unaided.

Itoi composed a playful poem on being surprised that she will live to see five eras when her eldest daughter Toshiko Hoshino, 75, told her that Heisei will soon give way to Reiwa. But during her long life, the 107-year-old also experienced painful events. She sometimes grimaces when scenes of war or the tsunami following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake are broadcast on television.

Toshiko asked her mother what, after seeing the Meiji, Taisho, Showa and Heisei eras, she hopes for in Reiwa. For it to "be beautiful, without war," Itoi replied.

(Japanese original by Kenshiro Nishime, Maebashi Bureau)