‘Climbing For Life’ review: Sayuri Yoshinaga lifts flat biopic of Japanese mountaineer Junko Tabei

Dir: Junji Sakamoto. Japan. 2025. 130mins

Legendary mountaineer Junko Tabei’s conquest of Mount Everest in the 1970s in the face of baked-in sexism, gender discrimination and family trauma seems tailor-made for the dramatic biopic treatment. Yet, even with the potential to position Tabei as a stealth feminist trailblazer wrestling with ingrained cultural instincts, director Junji Sakamoto lets old-fashioned sentiment get the better of the material. The result is a rousing, inspirational melodrama about never giving up on your dreams, or your life.

Lets old-fashioned sentiment get the better of the material

That’s not to say that Climbing For Life, which opens Tokyo after its San Sebastian bow, is without its positives – chief among them the full wattage charm of star Sayuri Yoshinaga, reuniting with Sakamoto for the first time since 2012’s A Chorus Of Angels. Sakamoto has always had a bit of a sweet tooth, as evidenced by his embezzler-with-heart-of-gold thriller Human Trust (2013) or small town drama Another World (2018), and this latest gently stirring, non-confrontational drama would be forgettable with any other cast. Yet even Yoshinaga’s considerable star power is unlikely to carry the film outside of Japan, where it opens at the end of October, and it may be best suited for streaming platforms.

Climbing For Life is very much indebted to the tried and true – some may say stale – formula of the biopic: the subject shows early promise and passion, enjoys success which introduces tension in the home, suffers a crisis of confidence and then rebounds to secure their legacy. Junko’s passion was mountaineering, which she did almost to the day she died (in 2016, aged 77), scaling the highest mountains in the world known collectively as the Seven Summits. Her other achievements include the organisation of a trek up Mount Fuji in support of kids impacted by Fukusima. In 2010, she was diagnosed with a terminal cancer that she simply rejected. The pieces of a compelling story are all there, but this dramatization never forms a compelling picture.

The film opens with Junko (played as a young woman by Non) summitting Everest in 1975 to great fanfare, before flashing ahead to her first cancer diagnosis. The story then flits back and forth in time, tracking how Junko became the first woman to reach the Himalayan peak (actually shot in Japan’s Toyama Prefecture). This accomplishment makes her and husband Masaaki (veteran Koichi Sato) gender outliers in 1970s Japan – he’s the stay-at-home parent while she’s away mountaineering.

That’s not the only challenge Junko faces. In order to make the trip to the top of the world, she must put together an all-female climbing crew and get innovative with gear, training and travel when Japan’s institutionalized sexism means they win next to nothing in funding. Energised, the 12 women head off to Nepal with journalist Etsuko Kitayama (played first by Mizuki Kayashima and later Yuki Amami), who becomes Junko’s closest friend. 

Despite these obstacles, Climbing For Life is almost completely free of conflict – with the exception of some resentment of Junko’s fame from her son Shjntaro (Ryuya Wakaba), who eventually reconciles his feelings and picks up the climbing baton.

Screenwriter Riko Sakaguchi’s (Takahiro Miki’s Fortuna’s Eye) expository dialogue brushes over the most interesting parts of Junko’s life: the team disintegration stemming from her individual renown. Visually, too, the film is sturdy and functional, if not as sweeping and breathtaking as one might expect. Even the avalanche that provides the impetus for the team’s eventual disunity is hampered by what was likely a modest budget.

Throughout, Sakaguchi and Sakamoto steer well clear of any hints at social or feminist agitation, ultimately rendering the film a pleasant couple of hours, but far from as memorable as Junko Tabei herself.