Remembering Junko Tabei

Many events are planned this year for the 75th anniversary of the first ascent of Annapurna, and the 70th anniversary of the first successful expeditions on Kangchenjunga and Makalu.

But there is much less fanfare about Junko Tabei, the first ever woman to climb Mt Everest on 16 May 1975 as part of a female Japanese expedition.

I was a 14-year-old girl in a small town in western Japan 50 years back as news about Tabei’s climb made global headlines and became a source of great national pride.

Japanese expeditions had been showing remarkable organisational and mountaineering skills, along with sheer determination, on Himalayan peaks since the heroic first ascent of Manaslu (8,163 m) in 1956 by Toshio Imanishi. The Nepal Himalaya had become a symbol of Japan’s recovery from its defeat in World War II just 10 years previously.

These were the heydays of siege style climbing that carried national ambitions. Only a limited number of team members were given the chance to reach the summit, and traditionally male-dominated Japanese mountaineering expeditions did not offer its female members the opportunity to reach the top.

But Japanese women mountaineers were carving a space for themselves. Eiko Miyazaki-Hisano led expeditions to Annapurna III (7,555 m) in 1970 and Everest in 1975. Tabei summited on both occasions, and on Everest it was with Ang Tsering Sherpa.

There were those who tried to belittle Tabei’s feat. She made light of it to me ten years after her summit: "There are some people who say behind my back that I was carried up by a Sherpa, but they know very well it is impossible to negotiate that narrow summit ridge with someone on your back.”

Tabei continued climbing, reaching the tops of the highest peaks on all seven continents, and a source of inspiration for women climbers from all over the world, including Nepalis.

She inspired me too, and I also started climbing mountains in Japan and the Himalaya with her. I also got involved in the many charitable activities that she launched in Nepal.

Tabei was modest and down-to-earth, a housewife and mother raising two children. She became a familiar face on television talk shows, and despite her celebrity persona was reluctant to dwell on her own feat, preferring instead to motivate others about the qualities needed to pursue one’s ambition in life.

Tabei launched her own line of outdoor apparel. She also became the brand ambassador for a well-known food company. By this time it was impossible for Japan's mountaineering community to ignore her any longer. In the late 1980s and 1990s, as the global need for environmental protection began to be recognised, renowned mountaineers responded to a call by Sir Edmund Hillary to help mountain conservation.

In Japan, Tabei set up the Himalayan Adventure Trust, Japan (HAT-J) dedicated to protecting Nepal’s fragile mountains. To address the problem of garbage along the Everest Trail, the group set up a waste management mechanism and an incinerator in Lukla.

These initiatives, including one to promote apple farming in Khumbu, had mixed success, mainly because of the language barrier of the Japanese volunteers. The local community was also not yet ready to establish a constructive relationship with outsiders.

Tabei’s good intentions were perhaps not enough, and it still pains me that I ended up taking a critical stance toward HAT-J's activities in Nepal at the time.

Juno Tabei focused not only on her own mountaineering, but also on encouraging children and young people to connect with nature. From 1992 to 2008, Hat-J organised 15 exchange trekking trips for Asian youth from various countries, including Japan and Nepal.

After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, Tabei who was born in Tohoku-Fukushima took a group of high school students affected by the disaster to climb Japan's highest peak, Mt Fuji (3,776m). These activities to promote the spirit of adventure in youth, were continued by her son, Shinya Tabei, and supporters.

Junko Tabei supported everyone around her with kindness and sincerity, and she gave me, both materially and emotionally, when I decided to move to Nepal despite the opposition of my family and people around me.

In 2016, when I was diagnosed as needing shoulder surgery she offered me financial assistance. It turned out to be a misdiagnosis, and no surgery was required, so I declined her help.

Junko Tabei died soon after. Only her husband, two children, and one close friend knew that she was in the final stages of cancer. She had offered to help me even in her own terminal condition.

That she kept such a secret makes me think that she wanted to close her life as a simple wife and mother, and make a graceful exit.

Junko Tabei rose from obscurity in rural Japan to be a global icon of courage and adventure — especially for women who have followed in her footsteps. For many of us who had the privilege of knowing her, Tabei was a model of humility and living life lightly.

Fifty years after summiting Mt Everest, Junko Tabei still inspires us to reach the summit of our own lives. Her example will live on long after we are all gone.

Miki Upreti is a native of Japan who has lived in Nepal since 1990. She is a former mountaineer, trail-runner, development worker, and now a cyclist and writer.