For the first time, Japan witnessed 178 people with the same first and second names gathering under one roof.
The historic event was then certified by the Guinness Book of World Records. The 178 people were each named Hirokazu Tanaka to celebrate the unusual feat.
Earlier in 2005, American businesswoman Martha Stewart broke the record of 164 people named ‘Martha Stewart’ however the Japanese have taken the prize.
The gathering was arranged by Hirokazu Tanaka, a corporate employee hailing from Tokyo. The Mainichi Shimbun reported that Tanaka became interested in people who had the same name as his in 1994 after he saw baseball player Hirokazu Tanaka get into Osaka Kintetsu Buffaloes.Â
This was the third attempt by the Hirokazu Tanakas to create a record in their name successfully as these attempts were made in 2011 and 2017 which eventually failed as only 71 and 87 people could participate. This year’s event saw the youngest participant of three-year-old, while the oldest participant was 80, and another travelling all the way from Hanoi to Vietnam to be a part of the event.
The record had some strict stipulating that the name when written in Chinese must have exactly the same letters or characters because the Chinese language can have different characters.Â
In the official video shared on Twitter, the men were dressed in matching T-shirts bearing their names and attended the event.
