With the number of middle-aged and elderly Japanese mountaineers seeking to challenge the world's peaks increasing, three Japanese climbers set new world records in May. Both of these accomplishments involved climbs up Mount Everest (Tibetan name: Chomolungma), the highest peak in the world at 8,848 meters. First Tamae Watanabe, 63, of Yokohama smashed the world record for the oldest woman to climb the mountain on May 16. The next day, Tomiyasu Ishikawa, 65, of Aichi Prefecture became the oldest person ever to do so. And young Japanese mountaineers are making the headlines, too. Jun Yamada, 23, a student at the University of Tokyo, also conquered Mount Everest and thereby broke the record for the youngest person ever to climb the highest peaks on seven continents. And Ken Noguchi, 28, who had himself achieved that record three years ago, finished his third cleanup expedition on Mount Everest in May to publicize the importance of environmental protection; his effort lasted two months.

Oldest Woman to Conquer World's Highest Peak
The oldest woman to have scaled Mount Everest previously was Polish; she succeeded in reaching the summit in the spring of 2000 at the age of 50. Watanabe therefore managed to break the record by more than 10 years. Watanabe began mountain climbing at the age of 28 and belonged to the mountaineering club at the Kanagawa Prefectural Government Office, where she worked. Before her record she had already managed to climb three peaks in the 8,000-meter range and two in the 7,000-meter range. Together with a mountain photographer, she challenged Mount Everest from the Nepal side and succeeded in reaching the top on May 16.

Watanabe, who began climbing in the Himalayas in her fifties, already surpasses male climbers of the same generation in terms of maximum oxygen intake and physical strength. A Nepalese Sherpa who accompanied her on a previous exhibition was said to have been amazed at the sight of her bounding along steep mountain paths over 5,000 meters up. Watanabe honed her mountaineering skills in the Tanzawa mountain range near her home. The doctor who supports her climbing from the medical side commented that "the secret of how she maintains her physical strength is that she has kept walking along mountain paths at a tremendous pace, always with a 15 kilogram load on her back."

Ishikawa succeeded in reaching the top of Mount Everest on May 17, a day after Watanabe, thereby breaking the record for the oldest person ever to conquer the peak by a year. The previous record holder was an American man who was aged 64 when he accomplished the feat last year. Ishikawa had managed to reach the top from the Nepal side in 1994. He tried again in 1999 from the opposite China side but failed. This time he challenged the China route again and succeeded.

Youngest Person to Climb Highest Peaks on Seven Continents
At the other end of the age scale, Yamada broke the record for the youngest person to climb the highest peaks on seven continents by about 10 months. The previous record holder - also Japanese - was Waseda University student Naoki Ishikawa, who was 23 years and 10 months when he accomplished the feat in May 2001. Yamada, who belongs to the mountaineering club of the University of Tokyo, took about two and a half years to scale the seven peaks, beginning with Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa in October 1999.

Meanwhile, Ken Noguchi, another previous holder of this record, has been making the headlines not for any new records but for his efforts to preserve the mountain environment. Shocked by the enormous amount of garbage left behind by climbers on Mount Everest, he began to make cleanup expeditions to the mountain in 2000, the year after he had set the record. For this year's expedition, his third, he appealed for climbers from other Asian countries to join him and formed an international cleanup team with participants from such countries as China, South Korea, and Nepal. The team collected about two tons of garbage and 161 oxygen cylinders that had been left behind by climbers. Noguchi gives talks at elementary and junior high schools around Japan to explain the aims of his cleanup expeditions and deepen interest in environmental issues.