Ikarashi was born on 26 January 1902 in Sanjo, Niigata, as the eldest of six children in a farmer family and worked as a rice farmer after graduating from elementary school to age 5060, when he retired in order to take care of his wife, who was ill and died at age 68 in 1973, and their grandchildren, and later grew chrysanthemums until age 91 when he fall from a pine tree and broke his left foot, but did not otherwise suffer from any severe injury or illness, and did not either drink alcohol and smoke (and believed that as the secret to a long life).
