"I'd be perfectly happy to die in the DJ booth – or the kitchen."
1020: Sumiko Iwamuro
Japan’s DJ Grandma
Born: c.1935, Tokyo, Japan
Also Known As: DJ Sumirock
Sumiko works at a family restaurant during the day and moonlights as a DJ in a local club a few nights a week. This makes her the oldest actively working DJ in the world.
She has been working in the restaurant since she was a teenager when it belonged to her father. The restaurant focuses on dumplings and Sumiko runs it alongside her brother.
Sumiko went to DJ school for a time to learn to do it right after her husband died.
She is so well known for her DJ skills she even traveled to New Zealand for a gig there in 2018. Sadly, there seems to be little else known about Sumiko online, or at least readily available in the English language. None of these articles that talk about Sumiko date after the Covid 19 pandemic, so we can only hope she is still out there, maybe spinning the tables from the comfort of her own home instead.
Sources:
https://www.timeout.com/tokyo/news/meet-sumiko-iwamuro-the-eternal-dj-011218