Beate Sirota
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Beate Sirota Gordon (born in Vienna, October 25, 1923 – ), former Performing Arts Director of the Japan Society, was a member of the team that worked for Douglas MacArthur on the Constitution of Japan.
She was the only child of pianist Leo Sirota, a Ukrainian Jew who had fled war-torn Russia and settled in Vienna, Austria. Sirota's family later emigrated to Japan, where Leo Sirota taught at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. She lived there ten years until she moved to Oakland, California, in 1939 to attend Mills College, returning afterward to post-war Tokyo to serve on the commission drafting the constitution.
Beate Sirota Gordon played an important role in writing into the Constitution legal equality for women in Japan.
References
- Beate Sirota Gordon. 1945 Nen no Kurisumasu(『1945年のクリスマス』). Tokyo: Kashiwashobo, 1995. ISBN 4760110771
- Beate Sirota Gordon. The Only Woman in the Room - A Memoir. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1997. ISBN 4770021453
- originally published in Japanese under the title: 1945 Nen no Kurisumasu, given literary form in Japanese by Makiko Hiraoka
External links
- Biography (http://www.tuj.ac.jp/newsite/main/law/lawresources/TUJonline/ConstitutionandGov/beateandJapaneseConst.html) (by Kuniko Fujisawa, Temple University Japan)
- Biography (http://www.asij.ac.jp/japan/asij_authors/e_g/gordon_b_bib.htm) (by Lindi Geisenheimer, ASIJ: American School in Japan)
- Beate Sirota Gordon (1924 - ) (http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/whm2001/gordon.html) (Sunshine for Women)