page_title: Junko Tabei
section_title: Later activities
hierarchical_section_title: Junko Tabei / Career / Later activities
caption_attribution_description: Eesti: Communism Peak (Ismail Samani Peak) in 1985. From left: Alfred Lõhmus, Jaan Künnap, Kalev Muru, Junko Tabei and Ilmar Priimets + two Japanise alpinists sitting in front: Nobuko Yanagisawa (left) and Mayuri Yasuhara.
context_page_description: Junko Tabei was a Japanese mountaineer, an author, and a teacher. She was the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest and the first woman to ascend the Seven Summits, climbing the highest peak on every continent.
  Tabei wrote seven books, organized environmental projects to clean up rubbish left behind by climbers on Everest, and led annual climbs up Mount Fuji for youth affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake.
  An astronomer had named asteroid 6897 Tabei after her and in 2019, a mountain range on Pluto was named Tabei Montes in her honour.
context_section_description: After her Everest expedition, Tabei continued her mountaineering pursuits, eventually climbing the highest mountain on each continent: Kilimanjaro (1980), Mt. Aconcagua (1987), Denali (1988), Mt. Elbrus (1989), Mount Vinson (1991), and Puncak Jaya (1992). Upon her successful climb of Puncak Jaya, she became the first woman to complete the Seven Summits challenge. By 2005, Tabei had taken part in 44 all-female mountaineering expeditions around the world. She had a personal goal of climbing the highest mountain in every country in the world, and by the end of her lifetime she had completed at least 70 of these mountains. 
  She never accepted corporate sponsorship after Mount Everest, preferring to remain financially independent. She saved money to fund her expeditions by making paid public appearances, guiding mountain-climbing tours, and tutoring local children in music and English. Tabei's friends and supporters sometimes donated food and equipment.
  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. One of the trust's projects was to build an incinerator to burn climbers' rubbish. She also led and participated in "clean-up" climbs in Japan and the Himalayas alongside her husband and children.
  In May 2003, a celebration was held in Kathmandu to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the first successful summit of Mount Everest, and crowds of Nepalese people gathered to cheer a procession of past Everest climbers. Tabei and Sir  Edmund Hillary were given a special place in the festivities for their respective achievements.
  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.
caption: Junko Tabei on Communism Peak in 1985 together with two other Japanese and four Estonian mountaineers
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