Why Japan Is So Strong at Climbing: The Facts on Medals, Systems and Gyms, and What Commentators Say

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Watch climbing competitions for a while and you notice something: boulder and lead finals often have several Japanese names. At the 2026 Asian Games in Aichi–Nagoya, Japan won 2 golds, 3 silvers and 1 bronze and topped the climbing medal table. Taiwan's national-team coach Yang Dong-wei says Taiwan's training model "leans towards the Japanese system" (OUTSiDERS, in Mandarin). So why is Japan so strong?

This is post 6 of the Climbing Competitions and Pro Climbing series. You hear plenty of explanations: Asian climbers are light, Japan has lots of gyms, kids start young. This post splits them into two layers. First the facts you can check, then the explanations commentators give, each one attributed to whoever said it. By the end you should be able to tell which "why Japan is strong" claims rest on data and which are just opinion.

The conclusion first: there is no public academic study that directly analyses why Japan is strong at climbing. The explanations below come from coaches, federation officials and journalists. They are worth hearing, but they are not settled.

The facts: how strong is Japan?

Olympics and World Championships

• Tokyo 2020: in the women's combined, Miho Nonaka won silver and Akiyo Noguchi bronze (olympics.com results).
• Paris 2024: in the men's boulder & lead, 17-year-old Sorato Anraku won silver with 145.4 points (olympics.com report).
• 2025 World Championships, Seoul: Anraku won men's boulder gold; in lead, Satone Yoshida took silver and Taisei Homma bronze (Wikipedia medal table).

Japan has not yet won an Olympic gold in climbing. Where Japan really stands out is not the Olympics but the season-long series.

World Cup overall titles

Counting the overall winners listed in Wikipedia's World Climbing Series article (every year links to official results), Japanese men have won 14 overall titles and Japanese women 8:

• Men: lead — Yuji Hirayama (1998, 2000), Sachi Amma (2012, 2013), Sorato Anraku (2023); boulder — Tomoa Narasaki (2016, 2019), Yoshiyuki Ogata (2021, 2022), Sorato Anraku (2023, 2024, 2025); combined — Tomoa Narasaki (2017, 2019).
• Women: Akiyo Noguchi won boulder (2009, 2010, 2014, 2015) and combined (2008, 2009, 2014); Miho Nonaka won boulder in 2018.

In 2023, his first senior season, Anraku won both the lead and the boulder overall titles. Olympedia says he was the first climber to win both in his debut senior season.

Depth: how many Japanese climbers make a final

Inside Climbing's analysis notes that the men's lead final at Briançon, France had seven Japanese climbers in 2023 and six in 2024. A final has only eight places.

Part of this comes down to the rules, which we return to below.

National competitions and selection: the Japan Cup

Japan's national championships are run by JMSCA (Japan Mountaineering and Sport Climbing Association), with one Japan Cup each for boulder, lead and speed. According to Wikipedia's Climbing Japan Cup article, the lead Japan Cup started in 1987 (2026 was the 39th edition; the 31st was in June 2017 and the 32nd in March 2019, with none in 2018, so editions run one behind years), the boulder Japan Cup in 2005 and speed in 2019.

The Japan Cup is also the national-team selection event. JMSCA's 2026 selection criteria (in Japanese) set the priority: first, athletes ranked in the top 10 of the previous year's world ranking; then athletes already named for the Asian Games; then, for boulder and lead, the top finishers at the national selection event (the Japan Cup), up to 8 men and 8 women. Japanese climbing outlet CLIMBERS (in Japanese) describes the Japan Cup as "the domestic season opener, the Japanese championship, and the national-team selection event."

Compare Taiwan: post 5 explained that Taiwan's national championships (open division) also count towards national-team points, but the full points rules are not public. Japan publishes its selection priorities on the federation website.

Youth development

In October 2024 JMSCA announced its "Next-Generation Athlete Development Project" (in Japanese). It partners with prefectural federations and commercial gyms to set up boulder development hubs and boulder/lead training hubs.

The project document also names three problems JMSCA sees for itself:

1. It needs a sustainable athlete development system, with gyms across the country working with the federation;
2. There are not enough climbing coaches;
3. Most Japanese gyms are bouldering gyms, and there are few facilities that could put Japan at the front of the world in lead and speed.

The background section adds that the current team is built mainly around climbers who have been active since 2016, and that winning medals at the Los Angeles Olympics will require developing the next generation. In other words, even the Japanese federation does not assume today's advantage will carry on by itself.

Young climbers also have their own national competitions. One is the JOC Junior Olympic Cup run by JMSCA; according to the Fujisawa climbing association (in Japanese), more than 200 youth climbers from across Japan take part each year.

National training centre

In 2022 the Higashi-Kanamachi sports ground in Katsushika, Tokyo was designated as a sport-specific National Training Center (NTC) hub for climbing, the first such designation for the sport (Tokyo Shimbun, in Japanese).

Compare Taiwan: in an interview with OUTSiDERS (in Mandarin), national-team coach Yang Dong-wei said Taiwan still has no venue built to international competition standards that can be used for dedicated training, and the national team mostly borrows commercial gyms.

How many gyms

Japan has a lot of climbing gyms, but the sources count them differently:

What is certain is that the number of Japanese gyms rose sharply within a decade. The exact figure depends on who did the counting.

The commentary: how people explain it

Each point below is someone's view, not a research finding.

1. Dense hold layouts and more movement variety. Toru Kobinata, then IFSC vice-president, told Number that gyms abroad often have fewer holds spaced further apart, which is easy for beginners to read but limits movement variety. Many Japanese gyms cover whole walls in holds, so you can combine them into all kinds of moves, and he believes this has helped Japanese climbers a lot. The same article cautions that gym growth is a worldwide trend, so "lots of gyms" alone is a weak explanation for Japan's strength.

2. Climb all the time, on problems from many different setters. In the OUTSiDERS interview Yang Dong-wei said: "Japanese climbers keep it simple: they just climb and climb. Solving problems from lots of different setters builds every part of their ability and their movement library." He also said Japanese teenagers may finish school at three and go straight to the gym, while Taiwanese kids only have Wednesday afternoons free.

3. Asians are light, so they suit climbing. This is a common claim, and Yang also said "climbing really suits Asians." But the Number article offers a counter-example: about ten years before 2019, the top of the world was almost entirely European, and Japanese climbers only rose to prominence recently. If body type were the main reason, that time gap would be hard to explain.

4. The quota system amplified depth. Inside Climbing explains that before 2025, World Cup quotas gave countries extra spots based on world ranking, and climbers in the world top 10 also got named spots of their own. Japan had many highly ranked climbers, so it could send many athletes, which is why finals often had six or seven Japanese climbers. When the rules changed in 2025, Japan lost more spots than any other country: 11. This explains why finals had so many Japanese climbers, not why Japanese climbers are so strong.

Comparison: Korea, China and Indonesia

Japan is not the only strong climbing nation in Asia, and each country is strong in different places:

• Indonesia focuses on speed. Veddriq Leonardo won men's speed gold at the Paris Olympics in 4.75 seconds (Reuters). AFP reported that Indonesia lists climbing as a national priority sport alongside badminton and weightlifting (via VnExpress).
• China has the deepest speed squad. The men's world-record holder Zhao Yicheng and 2025 world champion Long Jianguo are both Chinese; post 3 covers the records in detail.
• Korea is strong in lead and boulder. Lee Do-hyun won men's lead gold at the 2025 World Championships in Seoul, and Seo Chae-hyun won women's lead gold at the 2026 Asian Games (World Climbing Seoul report, 2026 Asian Games medal table).

Japan's strengths are boulder and lead; speed is comparatively weak. The federation itself says it lacks lead and speed facilities, which matches the spread of results.

What you can take from Japan

If you are a climber or parent in Taiwan, the parts of Japan's example backed by data are roughly these:

• Competition and selection are tied together, and the criteria are public. The Japan Cup is the selection event, and the selection order is published on the federation website.
• The federation works with commercial gyms to develop young climbers. JMSCA's project explicitly sets out to partner with gyms nationwide.
• Volume and variety of problems. Two commentators mention this, but no study has shown it is the main cause.

As for "Asian body types suit climbing," the data does not really support it.

Practice: three scenarios

The answer sits under each question. Think it through first.

1. A friend says: "Japanese climbers are light, so they're good at climbing." How do you reply?

2. You read that "in one 2023 lead final, seven of the eight finalists were Japanese." Can you say "Japan's lead climbers are seven times as good as the rest of the world combined"?

3. One article says "Japan has 800 gyms," another says "666." Which is right?

Next

Everything so far has been about competitions inside the World Climbing system. But there is more to climbing competition than that: deep-water solo contests over the sea, Italy's Rock Master with 40 editions, and a pro league that held its first event in London in 2026, each with its own rules and prize money. That's post 7: climbing competitions beyond World Climbing.

References

• Tokyo 2020 Sport Climbing results (olympics.com)
• Paris 2024 sport climbing results: Anraku Sorato, men's boulder and lead (olympics.com)
• 2025 IFSC Climbing World Championships (Wikipedia)
• World Climbing Series (Wikipedia)
• Sorato Anraku (Olympedia)
• Why Japan has 11 fewer spots at 2025 IFSC World Cups (Inside Climbing, 2025-01-29)
• Climbing Japan Cup (Wikipedia)
• 2026 selection criteria for international competitions (JMSCA, in Japanese)
• CLIMBERS: Boulder Japan Cup 2026 (in Japanese)
• JMSCA Next-Generation Athlete Development Project (in Japanese, 2024-10-01)
• 21st JOC Junior Olympic Cup (Fujisawa Sport Climbing Association, 2018-08-21, in Japanese)
• Higashi-Kanamachi sports ground becomes a National Training Center hub (Tokyo Shimbun, 2022-06-05, in Japanese)
• Number Web: why Japan became a bouldering power (Kenichi Moriyama, 2019-06-16, in Japanese)
• Number of climbing gyms in Japan, 2020 (Mickipedia, in Japanese)
• M&A in the climbing gym industry (CINC Capital, in Japanese)
• Interview: national-team coach Yang Dong-wei on Taiwan's competitiveness (OUTSiDERS, 2026-02-05, in Mandarin)
• Indonesia's Leonardo wins gold medal in men's speed event (Reuters, 2024-08-08)
• Rapid Indonesian speed climbers push boundaries and smash records (VnExpress / AFP)
• Lee and Garnbret take Lead world titles (World Climbing, 2025-09)
• Sport climbing at the 2026 Asian Games (Wikipedia)