Junko Tabei

was a Japanese mountaineer, author and teacher. She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest and ascend the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peak on every continent.

Tabei wrote seven books, organized environmental projects to clean up trash left behind by climbers on Everest, and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.

An astronomer named asteroid 6897 Tabei after her and in 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in her honor.

Early life

Junko Ishibashi was born on 22 September 1939 Her father was a printer. She was considered a frail child, but nevertheless she began mountain climbing at the age of ten, going on a class climbing trip to Mount Nasu. and the group was the first of its kind in Japan. Tabei later stated that she founded the club as a result of how she was treated by male mountaineers of the time; some men, for example, refused to climb with her, while others thought she was only interested in climbing as a way to find a husband. Tabei helped fund her climbing activities by working as an editor for the Journal of the Physical Society of Japan. the Joshi-Tohan Club decided to tackle Mount Everest. The club created a team known as the Japanese Women's Everest Expedition (JWEE), led by Eiko Hisano, which would attempt to summit Mount Everest. JWEE contained 15 members, most of them working women who came from a range of professions. Two of the women, including Tabei, were mothers. They applied for a climbing permit for Everest in 1971, but had to wait four years to receive a place in the formal climbing schedule. The group attracted much media attention with their plans, and the 15 women were initially accompanied by journalists and a television camera crew as they began their climb. and six sherpa guides assisted the team for the full span of the expedition. By 2005, Tabei had taken part in 44 all-female mountaineering expeditions around the world.

In addition to her climbing, Tabei worked on ecological concerns; in 2000, she completed postgraduate studies at Kyushu University focusing on the environmental degradation of Everest caused by the waste left behind by climbing groups. Tabei was also the director of the Himalayan Adventure Trust of Japan, an organization working at a global level to preserve mountain environments.

Between 1996 and 2008, Tabei wrote and published seven books. Following the Great East Japan Earthquake in 2011, Tabei began organizing annual guided excursions up Mount Fuji for schoolchildren affected by the disaster.

Death and legacy Tabei was diagnosed with stomach cancer in 2012, but continued with many of her mountaineering activities. In July 2016, despite her advancing illness, she led a youth expedition up Mount Fuji.

On 22 September 2019, Google commemorated the 80th anniversary of her birth with a Doodle. The accompanying write-up gave her motivation slogan, "Do not give up. Keep on your quest."

On 19 November 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in honor of Tabei's mountaineering accomplishments. The theme for naming mountains on Pluto is "Historic pioneers who crossed new horizons in the exploration of the Earth, sea and sky".

In popular culture In 2025, a film titled as Climbing for Life directed by Junji Sakamoto starring Sayuri Yoshinaga, chronicles her historic first ascent of Mount Everest as a woman in 1975 and her subsequent life challenges, marking the 50th anniversary of her achievement. The film opened the 38th Tokyo International Film Festival on October 27, 2025.

Tabei is the subject of the children's picture book Up, Up, Ever Up! Junko Tabei: A Life in the Mountains, which was written by Anita Yasuda and illustarted by Yuko Shimizu. It was included in Rise: A Feminist Book Project's Top Ten of 2026.