Junko Tabei, was the first woman to summit of Mount Everest and the first woman to ascend the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peaks on every continent. She has written seven books, and organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left by climbers on Mt. Everest.
Considered a frail child, she began climbing at age 10, enjoying the non-competitive nature of the sport and the striking natural landscapes. Her family did not have the money for such an expensive hobby, so she began to study English and American literature to become a teacher. When she graduated, she joined a number of men’s climbing clubs, but many men questioned her motives for pursuing a male-dominated sport. Soon she climbed all of the peaks in Japan, and met her husband to be, a mountaineer, on an excursion up Mount Tanigawa.
She established a women only mountaineering club in 1969, with the slogan “Let’s go on an overseas expedition by ourselves.” Their first expedition in 1970 was up Annapurna III in Nepal. She realized that she and the other Japanese women struggled to reconcile traditional Japanese values of quiet strength and stoic silence with more immediate practical needs of mountaineering. It obliged women to acknowledge personal limits, and to accept help from one another.
The next year, they applied for a permit to climb Mt. Everest, accorded 4 years later. The Japanese Women’s Everest Expedition was formed, with 15 women from a range of professions, including two mothers. When seeking sponsorship, they were told women should raise children, and each woman needed to raise $5000 themselves – and many made their own equipment from scratch as a result. Despite being buried under an avalanche, and badly bruised an injured, and bouts of altitude sickness, she made it to the top, facing unanticipated challenges near the peak. Her personal goal was to climb the highest mountain in every country, and by the end of her lifetime she had completed at least 70.
She refused corporate sponsorship after Everest, and saved money by making paid public appearances, guiding climbing tours, and tutoring music and English. From 2000 she actively initiated programs to keep mountains clean of trash. In 2003 she and Sir Edmund Hillary were given a special place in the Nepalese celebrations of 50 years since the first successful summit of Mount Everest.
