Shiori Hashimoto her medical uniform. At her Tokyo clinic of neurology, she sees patients from the local community four days a week. (Inside image courtesy of Shiori Hashimoto)
Japanese women are making a meaningful impact around the world. If they were ever invisible, certainly they are not now. What inspired them to step forward into their roles today? This time, JAPAN Forward sets out to feature Shiori Hashimoto, a medical doctor and veteran mountaineer who keeps breaking barriers and pulling others along with her. Join us for an exclusive interview with her in this latest edition in our series "Groundbreakers."
Developing Woman Mountaineering Leaders
She's a practicing physician and a mountaineer who led the first all-women expedition to scale one of the world's highest Himalayan mountains. And now she leads Japan's oldest and most prestigious mountaineering club, The Japanese Alpine Club (JAC). Shiori Hashimoto is the organization's 27th chair and the first woman to lead the JAC in its 120-year history.
Soon after taking the helm in 2023, Hashimoto launched a project to train young women members as mountaineering leaders. Her purpose was two-fold, to help increase female members and hopefully reverse the continuing trends of declining membership.
Recruiting some 10 members with leadership aspirations, she takes them mountaineering on the fourth Sunday every month, imparting beginners to advanced level climbing skills. Since the start of the project in 2023, the group has gone climbing 20-plus times, including trekking and snow hiking in the Japan Alps. Hashimoto’s climbing pals from the days of her Himalayan expedition help in their training.
As a woman leader, Hashimoto cares very much about developing women leaders, who will in turn help new novice members, and returning mid-career women, to become skilled mountaineers of the future. Her determination is very much in line with the history of the JAC itself.
Infusing New Accessibility Into The Japanese Alpine Club
The JAC was founded by several mostly young mountain lovers in 1905, the late years of the Meiji era, with the encouragement of British alpinist-missionary Walter Weston. Currently, it has some 4.300 members throughout Japan, with women accounting for slightly less than 25%.
In a recent interview, Hashimoto noted that the JAC is a group of diverse mountain lovers with different backgrounds. “It is our important role to have people who never climbed mountains experience joy of mountains,” she said. Along with it, she wants aging members to come back to mountaineering again.
Under the new slogan of “The JAC for All People” with the catch phrase “From climbing Himalayan mountains to hiking Takao-san,” she says she wants to make mountaineering accessible to all people in Japan and spread the pleasure of mountaineering to a diversity of people.
A Push For Senior Mountaineering
Hashimoto says she wants to see older JAC members – including those who once scaled Himalayan peaks or climbed the Japan Alps but gave up mountaineering due to advancing age – go back to enjoy mountain activities in manners that fit their physical ability.
“Safe Mountaineering in the Age of 100-Year Life” is the name of the project. She also calls on older but still active members to share their secrets for enjoying regular mountaineering. First proposed in 2022 when she was the club's medical committee chief, the concept was to make it a JAC 120th anniversary project. That anniversary will be marked in October..
Hashimoto says she wants young and old alike to enjoy the benefits of mountaineering. Physically, mountaineering makes you feel good, while walking mountain trails also provides time for self-reflection and an opportunity to think about many things. A recent British medical journal article also reports that mountaineering is one of the best sports to prevent frailty as aging advances, she adds.
And she is qualified to judge that. Hashimoto earned an International Diploma in Mountain Medicine (DiMM), popularly known as an international mountain doctor status, in 2012, after recognizing the need for specialized medical expertise in high-altitude environments.
A Heart Captured by the Mountains
JAC's first female leader began mountaineering as a Tokyo middle school student. Before that, she said, she was studying, but also running around fields and mountains collecting butterflies in the school’s extracurricular activities with a biology club.
However, in her second-year of middle school, she went on a Northern Alps traverse from Tsubakuro-dake to Yari-ga-dake. The grandeur of the mountains and the exhilarating feeling of climbing those peaks captured her heart. Mountaineering has been part of her life ever since.
Women Inspiring Women
At Tokyo Women’s Medical University, she first joined the school’s hiking club. However, wanting more, she soon revived the dormant climbing club – with guidance from Michiko Imai. A well-known doctor-alpinist then working at the hospital, Imai was the first woman to climb the three major north faces of the European Alps.
Hashimoto thought she would have to give up mountaineering once she became a doctor. But, not long after, she found an article in a mountaineering magazine at a bookstore about a plan for an all-women expedition to Bhutan. It was led by Junko Tabei, the first woman to scale Mount Everest (1975).
“Bhutan was a country that I had long wanted to visit,” said Hashimoto. She applied to be the expedition's medical staff in 1983. Tabei's team made the first ascent of Spechu Kang (5,200m) in the same year the eastern Himalayan country opened its mountains to foreign climbers for the first time.
During the expedition, Hashimoto provided health care for members, enabling her to gather data about the impact of high-altitude low-oxygen and low barometric pressure environments on the human body. That experience led to the life-long subject of her field work.
In the following years, she climbed many foreign mountains, including Kilimanjaro (5,895m) in 1985, Tomur Peak (7,435m in the Tian Shan range), Tocllaraju (6,012m), and three other 5,000-plus-meter-high Peruvian peaks. She wanted to get used to them, she says, to prepare herself for climbing eight-thousanders one day in the future.
Scaling GII as Leader of an All-Women Expedition
And that day came in 1988. Hashimoto led an all-women expedition to Gasherbrum II (GII, or K4), an 8,035-meter peak in the Karakoram Range on the China-Pakistan border. It was the first eight-thousander for all members. As the leader, she tried to get as many members of the party as possible to the top. In the end, five of the eight members stood on the summit – exceptional compared to the style of Japanese expeditions before hers.
She called her new expedition style “Second generation mountaineering.” In “first generation" expeditions, like the one led by pioneer climber Tabei, only one or two team members would reach the summit. Meanwhile, others in the party supported their ascent. Hashimoto’s “second generation” mountaineering style encouraged as many expedition members as possible to reach the top.
The GII expedition was the most impressive, memorable experience that has had profound impacts on my life thereafter, she said.
After GII, Hashimoto also led other all-women expeditions, including joint expeditions to Cho Oyu in 2002 and to Chomolungma (Mount Everest) in 2005. She says, “You may go higher and more difficult routes with men. But you can get more joy and satisfaction by climbing just with women.”
Climbing Mount Fuji with Cancer Survivors
"She began almost annual ascents of Mount Fuji in 1994, soon after returning from a five and half years of immunology study at Northshore University Hospital (NY.). Then, in 1999, she came across a daily newspaper article soliciting volunteers for a joint Japan-US project to support cancer survivors as they ascended Mount Fuji. When she applied for a medical and support position, she was invited to join the project’s executive committee.
The project was planned and organized by Dr Jinro Itami, known for his “Meaningful Life Therapy,” and Andrea R Martin, founder of the US Breast Cancer Fund, who herself was a two-time breast cancer survivor.
Some 460 female cancer patients and survivors, along with medical and mountaineering support members, took part in the August 2000 event. Staying overnight at a mountain hut, most of the cancer survivors reached the top of the 3,776-meter mountain.
Hashimoto surveyed changes in the participants’ “quality of life” before and after their ascent. She found these QOL scores showed considerable improvement in both physical and mental condition after the climb, which she later applied to other projects. As a high point, in 2023, the same group organized some 40 women, half of them cancer survivors, for a summer climb up the symbol of Japan. Belatedly due to the COVID-19 pandemic delays, it marked the 20th anniversary of that August 2000 joint ascent of Mount Fuji.
Launching the FRCC Cancer Survivors' Climbing Club
Encouraged by her findings and the success of the Mount Fuji project, Hashimoto, together with her longtime mountaineering partners, founded the Front Runners Climbing Club (FRCC) in 2001. It's mission: to support women cancer survivors and patients wishing to enjoy mountain activities.
With some 80 members in their 20s to their 80s, the FRCC organizes one-day mountain hikes every second Sunday. Hashimoto makes plans for most of these mountain hikes herself and often takes part as the leader.
Since 2002, groups of about 30 members have participated in 275 monthly mountaineering events, which are carefully planned to help build up individual strength and skills. They often culminate in a two- to three-day climb in the Japan Alps in the summer.
Mountaineering for the Future
Now 72, Hashimoto sees patients four days a week at her neurology clinic, which she opened in 2013, after leaving the medical university where she had served for 33 years. It is in the same building where her father used to see his patients as a community pediatrician. Weekends and one weekday (when the clinic is closed) are generally spent on JAC and other mountaineering activities.
When the winter climbing season approaches, she can often be found rucking on Mount Takao to stay fit. She likes to make three ascents for training, which amounts to climbing some 1,100-1,200 meters in height. “You know you really need to be strong to do winter climbing,” she says.
Determined to keep sharing her rich experiences in mountaineering and mountain medicine, she concludes, “It would be great if JAC members can enjoy mountaineering life as I have done.”
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(Read the report in Japanese.)
Author: Yoshikazu Ishizuka
