Japanese Misao Okawa, the world's oldest living person, is helped to eat her birthday cake as she celebrates her 117th birthday at an elder care facility in Osaka, western Japan in this photo taken by Kyodo March 5, 2015.Reuters 
Japanese Misao Okawa, the world's oldest woman, eats her birthday cake as she celebrates her 116th birthday in Osaka, western Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo March 5, 2014.Reuters
Misao Okawa, a Japanese woman who was considered to be the oldest person in the world, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 117.
Born in 1898, Okawa had only recently celebrated her 117th birthday on 5 March, and had seemed to be in a cheery spirit, telling media that her life seemed "rather short".
However, staff form the nursing home in Osaka in Japan where she lived revealed that she had not been keeping well for the last few days.
They told NBC News that they had been worried since she started eating lesser food than usual.
Okawa passed away in the nursing home on Wednesday morning, having lived through two world wars.
She had been recognised as oldest person in the world in 2013 by Guinness World Records.
Okawa was born in 1898 into a family which ran a garment business, with reports claiming that her father used to make kimonos, the traditional Japanese garment.
She used to work in the family business before marrying her husband Yukio in 1919 at the age of 21.
She had three children, four grand children and six great-grand children.
Okawa had been asked about the secret to her long life when she brought in her 117th birthday, to which she had jokingly replied saying, "I wonder about that too".
