Junko Tabei Masters the Mountains

by Rebel Girls

  To the Rebel Girls of the world…

  No mountain is too high

  if you put one foot in front

  of the other.

  Junko Tabei

  September 22, 1939-October 20, 2016

  Japan

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Who wants to go on a field trip to the mountains?” Mr. Watanabe asked his fourth-grade class.

  Junko’s hand shot up in the air. She wasn’t sure why, since going to the mountains probably meant lots of hiking and climbing, and she was bad at sports. Really bad. PE was her least favorite subject at school. She couldn’t do the gymnastics other kids could do, and she much preferred reading to running.

  This is not a good idea, she thought. She lowered her hand and pretended to sweep her bangs out of her eyes. But she really did want to try. It sounded like fun. She raised her hand again and made herself keep it there. Her heart thumped wildly in her chest.

  The teacher nodded and smiled at her. “Ms. Ishibashi. Excellent. Anyone else?”

  Other students raised their hands, too. Two boys sitting in front of Junko smirked and whispered to each other. She could guess what they were saying: There’s no way Junko can climb a mountain. She’s tiny and weak. Plus, she’s a girl.

  “Gentlemen, do you have something you’d like to share with the class?” Mr. Watanabe asked.

  “No, sir!” The two boys sat up straight in their seats.

  “That’s good to hear! And since it seems like enough of you are interested in doing some mountaineering, I’ll contact your parents and organize the details for our trip this summer.”

  Junko squirmed. Mountaineering. The word made it sound so serious. She was nervous but also excited.

  After school, she walked home with her friend Hideo. They followed a path along the river, like they always did. Colorful petals from flowering fruit trees rained down around them from above.

  “Just ignore those guys,” Hideo said. He must have noticed the whispering in class.

  “I’ll try,” Junko said, still a little nervous about the trip. “Have you ever done any mountaineering?”

  “Yeah, on Castle Mountain,” Hideo joked. Junko laughed with her friend. Castle Mountain wasn’t really a mountain. It was more like a hill, and it was in the middle of their town, Miharu, in north-central Japan. From the top, you could see the whole town—farms, temples, houses, shops, and even their elementary school.

  Junko had hiked up Castle Mountain a bunch of times with Hideo and her other friends. She liked seeing the world from up high.

  But Castle Mountain wasn’t that high. It was small, just like Junko herself. The mountain Mr. Watanabe wanted to take them to would surely be much bigger. From the top, you could probably see all of Japan.

  * * *

  That night at dinner, Junko told her family about the field trip.

  “Are you sure you want to go, Jun-chan?” her mother, Kiyo, asked. She ladled steaming white rice into a blue earthenware bowl, added a pickled plum, and passed the bowl to Junko. “It doesn’t seem like your sort of thing.”

  “Well, I think it sounds like quite the adventure,” her father, Morinobu, said as he lifted a piece of grilled mackerel with his chopsticks. Behind his glasses, his brown eyes were cheerful.

  Around the crowded table, everyone began talking at once: Junko’s brothers and sisters, the two housekeepers who lived with them, and some of her father’s employees from his printing company, who also lived with them.

  “Will it be Mount Fuji? Or Mount Kita? Or some other mountain?”

  “My friend climbed Mount Fuji once.”

  “What if you run into a bear?”

  “What if you run into lots of bears?”

  “What if everyone reaches the top except for you?”

  “Yeah, didn’t you flunk gym class?”

  “Isn’t mountain climbing a man’s sport?”

  Junko lowered her head and concentrated on her rice as the conversation swirled around her. She was the second youngest of seven children, and she often got lost in her thoughts. The pickled plum was extra-salty and sour, the way she liked it, but she barely noticed. She was too busy answering questions in her head.

  Why shouldn’t girls climb mountains? This is 1949, not medieval times, she thought. And so what if I’m not a super-duper-mega-athlete? I can still put one foot in front of the other. If I have to take tons of breaks, or if I’m the last one to reach the top, that’s fine. At least I’ll have tried my best.

  Junko trusted Mr. Watanabe, who was her favorite teacher. Actually, he was pretty much everyone’s favorite teacher. He was different from the other instructors at their school, and it wasn’t just his long, shaggy hair. On nice days, he often took their class to Castle Mountain for picnic lunches. There, under the flowering trees, he would tell his students thrilling tales about the mountains he’d climbed and the cities he’d visited. He would also describe his favorite books, like The Diary of Anne Frank and The Broken Commandment, and Junko and the others would cry at the sad parts, even if they didn’t totally understand them.

  Mr. Watanabe was just about the smartest person she knew. If he believed she could hike to the top of a mountain, then she could hike to the top of a mountain. Right?

  CHAPTER TWO

  Mr. Watanabe kept his promise. That summer, he took Junko and some of her classmates to the Nasu mountain range in Nikkō National Park.

  They rode a train and a bus to get to their destination. Junko stared out the window at the blur of houses and farms they passed by. She had never traveled this far from home, so everything about the journey was exciting and new: the man selling bento box lunches at the train station, the leathery smell of the bus seats, the pretty countryside.

  They finally reached the base of the mountain range. Junko couldn’t believe how enormous it was. It made Castle Mountain seem like an anthill! There were lots of other visitors there, too, carrying backpacks and walking sticks, just like they were.

  After a quick snack of clementines, rice crackers, and barley tea, the group from Miharu headed for the mountainside inn where they would spend the night; the big hike to the top of Asahi Peak wasn’t until tomorrow.

  As they neared the inn, Hideo called out: “Hey, check it out. The ground is warm!”

  Junko knelt down and touched the ground. It was warm, and not just from the sun. The others knelt and touched the ground, too, gasping in awe.

  “This mountain range is volcanic,” Mr. Watanabe explained. “There’s hot water running beneath the surface.”

  “Did you say volcanic? Will it erupt?” Junko asked.

  “No, it won’t erupt. But it has created onsen, or hot springs, all over this place. Tourists come from everywhere to bathe in them.”

  Mr. Watanabe was right. Junko had thought only cold water ran in rivers, but this part of Japan had hot-water rivers (and hot-water ponds, too). The area was full of them, and in fact, there were several onsen outside their inn. Grown-ups sat in them, sipping drinks out of wooden cups and looking relaxed and happy.

  That night at their inn, Junko’s group cooked their own dinner. They had packed miso bean paste, rice, curry mix, and vegetables in their backpacks along with their clothes.

  Junko had never cooked at home. But she found that she loved cooking, especially with her classmates. They peeled potatoes and carrots to make into a curry to serve over rice. They sliced eggplants to fry. They diced tomatoes for a salad. Who knew that something so simple could be so much fun?

  After dinner, they all went for a soak in one of the onsen. As the steam rose around them and the stars glittered like diamonds in the night sky, Junko thought that she’d never felt more peaceful.
This trip wasn’t just about climbing a mountain. It was about being with her friends and enjoying nature together.

  * * *

  “Come on, Jun-chan!”

  “You’ve got this!”

  Junko stopped in the middle of the steep, rocky trail, gasping for breath. She bent down and grabbed her knees, and her sun hat fell to the ground. From above, her classmates shouted encouragingly.

  She wiped her brow with the back of her hand. She wasn’t sure she could do this. Her lungs hurt, her legs ached, and she could feel painful blisters forming on her feet under her thin socks and running shoes. She couldn’t move another step.

  Also, why had she worn a dress? Pants would have been much more practical. She, Junko Ishibashi, was obviously not cut out for this mountaineering business. Mountaineering was for people who had strength and stamina. People who weren’t small and weak. People who knew what to wear for the occasion.

  “Did I ever tell you about the first time I climbed a mountain?”

  Junko glanced up. Mr. Watanabe was trotting down the trail toward her as the rest of the group disappeared around a bend.

  Junko shook her head, still gasping for breath.

  “It was awful. I promised myself I would never climb another mountain again,” said Mr. Watanabe. “I guess I didn’t keep that promise,” he added with a grin.

  Junko stood up a little straighter as she considered this. Mr. Watanabe was always so full of energy and enthusiasm. She couldn’t imagine him ever feeling like she did now. Like giving up. Like making a U-turn back to the inn. Like soaking her extremely sore muscles in an onsen as she sobbed in embarrassment.

  She waited for Mr. Watanabe to give her sympathy. But he didn’t. Instead, he handed her a metal thermos. “Keep drinking and stay hydrated. And ganbatte! The view at the top will be worth it.” He turned and jogged back up the trail to join the others.

  Junko stood frozen in her spot. She didn’t know what to do next.

  Drink. Stay hydrated.

  She could do that much. She unscrewed the thermos lid and took a long, cool, delicious swig. She’d emptied her own thermos long ago and hadn’t realized how thirsty she was. Her breathing slowly returned to normal.

  Ganbatte. Do your best.

  Junko tipped her head up to the blue sky. Treetops, feathery white clouds, soaring birds—and somewhere up there was her goal.

  Break’s over, she told herself. She picked up her sun hat, boosted her backpack onto her shoulders, and started walking again.

  An hour later, she stood on the summit—the highest point of the mountain—with the rest of her group. Junko felt as though she were at the top of the world. She spun around on her toes, taking in the view of the surrounding mountains, endless forests, and tiny towns way below. The air was different up here, crisp and cold even though it was summer, and the ground beneath her feet bubbled with hot-springs water.

  I did it! I climbed a mountain!

  Something inside her had shifted. She, Junko Ishibashi, had become a mountaineer.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Over the following years, Junko really wanted to climb more mountains. But things didn’t exactly work out that way.

  “Did you finish your homework?” Junko’s mother asked one night as they washed dishes together after dinner. She wore a white apron dress over her clothes, and her black hair was tied back in a bun. Now that Junko was in seventh grade, she had a huge amount of homework to do every day.

  “Sure,” Junko lied.

  “What about your English test?”

  “What about it?”

  “It’s tomorrow, isn’t it? Did you study for it?”

  “Yes,” Junko lied again.

  She never used to lie to her parents. She used to care about doing well in school. But that was all before her older sister Chikako had died from a disease called leukemia. After that, school didn’t seem to matter. Neither did telling the truth or following the rules or anything else.

  Kiyo sighed. She scrubbed at a stubborn pot and lectured Junko about the importance of studying. Junko pretended to listen, but instead she sang a song in her head—the one about the bossy mother crow who fussed over her little crows: “Crow, why do you cry so much?”—and concentrated on drying the soup bowls with a cloth. From the next room came the sounds of her father’s crackly radio. Her brothers and sisters were scattered throughout the house, no doubt doing their homework like good, responsible children.

  * * *

  Later that week at school, Junko’s English teacher handed back the tests.

  “You can do better than this,” he said. “I don’t know what’s happened to you. You used to be an outstanding student.”

  Whatever, Junko wanted to say. She disliked this teacher, who was mean and always gave her a hard time. She grabbed her test from him and stuffed it into her book bag without looking at it.

  But as she closed her bag, she happened to see the grade scrawled at the top of the test.

  It was low.

  Really low.

  She gulped. Maybe she was carrying this not-studying business a little too far?

  For the next English test, Junko decided to prepare. If she got a high grade on it, then maybe the annoying teacher would stop nagging her and leave her alone.

  Junko did get a high grade on the next test. But instead of leaving her alone, the teacher called her to the front of the class.

  “How did you go from such a low grade on the last test to such a high grade on this one? You obviously cheated,” he accused her.

  “I did not cheat!”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Junko couldn’t stand the idea that this teacher, or anyone else, didn’t believe in her.

  From then on, she went back to her old studying habits. She took careful notes in her classes, did her homework on time, and prepared diligently for her tests. Especially her English tests. She wanted to prove to her teacher that she could get good grades on her own.

  School is sort of like mountain climbing, Junko thought. I just need to put one foot in front of the other, keep going, and not give up.

  * * *

  Junko’s new determination carried her through to her last year of high school. By then, she had a plan: go to college and maybe become a teacher (not like the mean English teacher, but like Mr. Watanabe). She liked books, so she thought teaching would be a good profession for her.

  There was only one problem with her plan. Girls weren’t really encouraged to attend college; instead, they were expected to get married and start a family as soon as possible. In Japan, sometimes a girl’s parents might find a husband for her through an “arranged marriage,” which meant that two families agreed for their adult son and adult daughter to meet, date, and marry each other. (Junko’s older sister Fuchi had met and married her husband this way.)

  Junko wasn’t ready for marriage, arranged or not. She wanted to learn things, experience the world, and enjoy her independence. She was meant to do something with her life—maybe teaching, maybe something else. College would give her the chance to figure out her future.

  “You need to get married,” her mother told her as her high school graduation neared. “Or you could get a job first. The Yamadas’ daughter met her husband at the hospital where she worked as a receptionist. He’s a doctor!”

  “I don’t want to get married right away. Or maybe ever. I want to have a career and make my own money,” Junko replied.

  Kiyo gasped. “What do you mean you don’t want to get married right away or maybe ever? That’s no kind of attitude for a—”

  “Teaching is a perfectly acceptable profession for a woman,” Junko’s father interrupted. “More and more girls are going to college these days. Junko could apply to one of the nearby universities and—”

  “I want to go to college in Tokyo,” Junko cut in.

  Morinobu stared at her. “You want to go to college in Tokyo,” he repeated.

  “Absolutely not!” Kiyo exclaimed. “Tokyo
is too far away. Besides, you’re a country girl. You’d never survive in the city!”

  “Fuchi lives there,” Junko pointed out.

  “Yes, with her husband.”

  The argument went back and forth for weeks. In the end, Junko finally managed to convince her father to let her go to college in Tokyo, and once he was on her side, her mother agreed, too—although not for the right reasons.

  “You’ll find a nice husband in college,” she told Junko. “The Sugimotos’ daughter met her husband at the University of Tokyo, and he’s a very successful lawyer now!”

  “Uh-huh, okay, sure,” Junko said to appease her.

  Later, as Junko filled out her college applications, she thought about what her life would be like in Tokyo. She’d never been there, but Fuchi had told her many stories about the big, glamorous city. Junko looked forward to the hustle and bustle, the lively crowds. She looked forward to having coffee in fancy cafés and attending plays and concerts.

  She also looked forward to maybe, just maybe, climbing a few mountains on the weekends once she had more freedom. Her dream of doing more mountaineering had faded since that first field trip with Mr. Watanabe, but it had never completely gone away.

  Now, though, Junko’s future seemed wide-open and full of possibilities. She was practically an adult. She was 100 percent (okay, maybe 99 percent) ready for college, for Tokyo…for all of it.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  On Junko’s first day at Showa Women’s University, she stood frowning at the campus map in a large courtyard. She couldn’t figure out how to get to her next class.

  “Excuse me,” she said, trying to get the attention of the nearest person to ask for directions. Everyone seemed to be in a hurry.

  A girl stopped. She wore a green silk dress that was belted at the waist and high-heeled black boots. She looked like a model from a fashion magazine.