Yuichiro Miura has an unusual routine for a man who just turned 75.
At dawn, the veteran adventurer wakes after a night in a private low-oxygen chamber. He straps weights onto his ankles, hoists a 20kg backpack onto his shoulders and hikes for hours around Tokyo. Sometimes he adds a stroll on his treadmill.
Ask Miura why he isn't on the golf course or puttering around a vegetable garden, and he has a simple answer -- Mount Everest.
PHOTO: AP
Miura is one of Japan's old men of the mountain, a small cluster of graying Japanese climbers who since 2002 have been passing among themselves an august title: the oldest person to have conquered the world's tallest peak.
"It's a tough but wonderful thing to get to the peak when you are past 70," Miura said at his Tokyo home. "I hope to send the message that we have the potential for many things in this aging society."
Miura is already famous for having skied down Everest in 1970, a feat captured in an Oscar-winning documentary. Now, for seniors like him, climbing the 8,850m Himalayan peak is as extreme an elderly activity as they come.
Toshio Yamamoto started the string of Japanese victories by scaling the peak in 2000 at 63 years. In 2001, American Sherman Bull reached the summit at 64 years old. Tomiyasu Ishikawa, then 65, took the title in 2002.
Miura won the distinction in 2003, at 70, but was eclipsed by fellow Japanese climber Takao Arayama, who scaled the peak last year, just three days older than Miura was when he did it. Katsusuke Yanagisawa took the crown this year, at age 71 years and 63 days.
Now Miura wants to do it again.
"It feels like the goddess of Everest is beckoning me to come back," said Miura, who is planning an assault on the mountain next spring, when he'll be 75 (Edmund Hillary was 33 when he becameone of the the first men to climb Everest, in 1953). None of three other Japanese record-holders plans to scale the mountain again, they say.
The Japanese also holds the record for oldest woman on Everest: Tamae Watanabe in 2002, at age 63.
Some attribute the prevalence of Japanese adventurers among the ranks of older climbers to the same factors that make them live increasingly longer: a diet heavy in vegetables and fish, excellent health care and trim physiques.
"Overall, the elderly have more vitality than before and their performance in sports is also improving," said Takuji Shirasawa, a specialist on aging at the Tokyo Metropolitan Institute of Gerontology who consults Miura.
Another factor in play is increasing affluence.
The spread of commercial expeditions beginning in the early 1990s allowed inexperienced but rich climbers to reach the summit.
Arayama, who broke Miura's record when he scaled the peak last year, said climbing Everest was a remote idea in his 20s, when the science was undeveloped and the experience was not widely open to the general public.
"The way we climb has changed. You use oxygen so you won't tire yourself, and more was found out about the best pace of climbing, and that's why I got to climb," he said.
Money brings world-class equipment, expert assistance on the mountain, and state-of-the-art training.
Miura's climb is estimated to cost around ¥200 million (US$1.7 million) spanning three years to next year, including overseas training trips and ¥60 million for the May expedition, which includes expenses for his climbing companions as well as communication and video recording costs. The effort is supported by corporate giants including Toyota Corp and Toshiba Corp.
But Miura says setting a record isn't all that important, since someone else will surely come along and break it. Instead, he said, "It's about discovering what I can do."
The death of a former head of China’s one-child policy has been met not by tributes, but by castigation of the abandoned policy on social media this week. State media praised Peng Peiyun (彭珮雲), former head of China’s National Family Planning Commission from 1988 to 1998, as “an outstanding leader” in her work related to women and children. The reaction on Chinese social media to Peng’s death in Beijing on Sunday, just shy of her 96th birthday, was less positive. “Those children who were lost, naked, are waiting for you over there” in the afterlife, one person posted on China’s Sina Weibo platform. China’s
‘NO COUNTRY BUMPKIN’: The judge rejected arguments that former prime minister Najib Razak was an unwitting victim, saying Najib took steps to protect his position Imprisoned former Malaysian prime minister Najib Razak was yesterday convicted, following a corruption trial tied to multibillion-dollar looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) state investment fund. The nation’s high court found Najib, 72, guilty on four counts of abuse of power and 21 charges of money laundering related to more than US$700 million channeled into his personal bank accounts from the 1MDB fund. Najib denied any wrongdoing, and maintained the funds were a political donation from Saudi Arabia and that he had been misled by rogue financiers led by businessman Low Taek Jho. Low, thought to be the scandal’s mastermind, remains
‘POLITICAL LOYALTY’: The move breaks with decades of precedent among US administrations, which have tended to leave career ambassadors in their posts US President Donald Trump’s administration has ordered dozens of US ambassadors to step down, people familiar with the matter said, a precedent-breaking recall that would leave embassies abroad without US Senate-confirmed leadership. The envoys, career diplomats who were almost all named to their jobs under former US president Joe Biden, were told over the phone in the past few days they needed to depart in the next few weeks, the people said. They would not be fired, but finding new roles would be a challenge given that many are far along in their careers and opportunities for senior diplomats can
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday announced plans for a national bravery award to recognize civilians and first responders who confronted “the worst of evil” during an anti-Semitic terror attack that left 15 dead and has cast a heavy shadow over the nation’s holiday season. Albanese said he plans to establish a special honors system for those who placed themselves in harm’s way to help during the attack on a beachside Hanukkah celebration, like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-Australian Muslim who disarmed one of the assailants before being wounded himself. Sajid Akram, who was killed by police during the Dec. 14 attack, and
RSS