Two Japanese high school students have won gold medals at this year's International Mathematical Olympiad in Slovenia, while four other Japanese contestants took silver and bronze, education ministry officials said Tuesday.
The combined score of the Japan team was good enough for a seventh place finish, the highest ever for a Japanese team.
In the competition held Wednesday and Thursday in Ljubljana, Yuta Ohashi and Masaki Watanabe, both 17 and from Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba, won top prizes, the Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology Ministry said.
The two were among 42 gold medalists at the annual competition in which 498 contestants from 90 economies participated, the organizers said.
Silver medals went to Yuki Ito, 18, of Nada Senior High School in Kobe, and Yuki Yoshida, 17, from the same school, as well as Toshiki Kataoka, 16, from Takada Senior High School in Tsu, Mie Prefecture.
Teruhisa Koshikawa, 16, from Senior High School at Komaba, University of Tsukuba, won a bronze medal.
Watanabe and Kataoka also won gold at last year's competition in Mexico.
The International Mathematical Olympiad is the mathematics world championship for high school students and has been held every year since 1959.