Japan may not have...

...the second largest economy anymore, but it can still brag about having the world’s highest life expectancy. Or can it?

In an article in yesterday's Times, "Japan, Checking on Its Oldest, Finds Many Gone":

To date, the authorities have been unable to find more than 281 Japanese who had been listed in records as 100 years old or older. Facing a growing public outcry, the country’s health minister, Akira Nagatsuma, said officials would meet with every person listed as 110 or older to verify that they are alive; Tokyo officials made the same promise for the 3,000 or so residents listed as 100 and up.
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For the moment, there are no clear answers about what happened to most of the missing centenarians. Is the country witnessing the results of pension fraud on a large scale, or, as most officials maintain, was most of the problem a result of sloppy record keeping?
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In a typical case, relatives of a man listed as 103 years old said he had left home 38 years ago and never returned. The man’s son, now 73, told officials that he continued to collect his father’s pension “in case he returned one day.”

“No one really suspects foul play in these cases,” said Manabu Hajikano, director of Adachi’s resident registration section.

Of course not.