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Businessman with terminal cancer hosts ‘end-of-life’ party

It was the party of a lifetime.

A Japanese businessman with terminal cancer held an “end-of-life” shindig Monday so he could thank the people who made his time on Earth special.

Satoru Anzaki, the 80-year-old former head of manufacturer Komatsu, threw the bash for 1,000 friends, colleagues and former schoolmates after learning in October that he has gallbladder cancer.

Rather than mourn, he decided to cut a rug.

“I have enjoyed my life very much. I thought that being despondent is not in my nature,” he told a new conference after the bash, according to the BBC. “I am satisfied that I could say ‘thank you’ to people I encountered in life.”

Anzaki got the grim news that he had a form of cancer that could not be treated by surgery in October, but by Nov. 20, he’d taken out an ad in financial newspaper The Nikkei heralding the party, according to The UK Telegraph.

“As I want to maximize the quality of life during the time I have left, I have decided not to receive treatment given the side effects,” Anzaki said of his decision not to seek chemotherapy.

He threw the party in a Tokyo hotel decorated with memories from his life, and even brought in a group of dancers from his home prefecture of Tokushima to keep the mood from dipping, it was reported.

“I am also suffering from an illness so it got me thinking how I want to live the rest of my life,” one former employee told national broadcaster NHK.