Regarding the Aug. 6 article "Cities scrambling to find centenarians": This is the funniest — yet not funny — scandal to ever hit the pages of multimedia. Maybe a good suggestion would be to connect the medical insurance system with the pension system, since more than 99 percent of the population of Japan visits a doctor, dentist or chiropractor, if not on a monthly basis then at least once a year.
Or better yet, require a doctor or other health practitioner's certification of health care be provided on a yearly basis to the social insurance administration in order to continue pension payments. What better way to know whether someone is alive can there be?
It doesn't sound like too hard of a system to implement, just a computer program or two. Just food for thought.