As the average age of Japan's population continues to get closer and closer to the retirement age, every year when "Respect for the Aged Day," a national holiday honoring the country's elders, rolls around it goes without saying that the number of people to pay tribute to rises. But this year the number of super seniors will have surpassed the 50,000 benchmark, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare ministry on Friday.

There will be 51,376 centenarians in Japan as of Saturday, a 7.5% increase from the previous year. Japanese women, who are frequently at the top of the list as the demographic with the world's greatest longevity, comprise about 87% of the tally.

It’s a long way from when the government started its survey back in 1963 when there were just 153 people over 100. The figure broke the 10,000 mark in 1998. Though, to be sure, the disturbing discovery in the summer of 2010 that hundreds of registered centenarians had in fact died long ago cast doubt on the accuracy on the number of Japan’s reported elderly.

At 115 years old, Jirouemon Kimura of Kyoto is Japan's oldest living person and the oldest man in the world, recognized by the Guinness World Records last year. The oldest woman in Japan is 114 years old.

The prefecture with the highest concentration of centenarians is Kouchi where there are 78.5 for every 10,000 people, followed by 77.8 people in Shimane and 67.3 people in Yamaguchi. That Tokyo is home to over 13,000 triple-digit elders, the most of all the urban areas, shouldn’t come as a shock. As well as being the country’s most crowded city a recent forecast estimated that in the year 2100, the portion of Tokyo’s elderly population — those 65 years or older — is forecast to equal that of the “working age population,” those between the ages of 15 to 64.

While the holiday is a chance to take a moment to celebrate its elders, Japan’s rapidly graying population is anything but a fleeting thought. It’s a big and deepening wrinkle in the country’s fiscal woes. Japanese economists have long warned of what the demographic dilemma up ahead will pose on its economy as costs to care for the ballooning senior population soar. But the gridlocked government has made little progress in addressing critical steps such as cuts in pension benefits and increases in premiums.