Beate Sirota Gordon (; October 25, 1923 – December 30, 2012) was an Austrian-born
American
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, pe ...
performing arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
presenter and
women's rights advocate. She was the former Performing Arts Director of the
Japan Society and the
Asia Society
The Asia Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) and around the world (Hong Kong, Man ...
and was one of the last surviving members of the team that worked under
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
to write the
Constitution of Japan after
World War II.
Early life and education
Born in
Vienna on October 25, 1923 and educated in
Tokyo, Beate Sirota was the only child of noted pianist
Leo Sirota
Leo Gregorovich Sirota (May 4, 1885 - February 25, 1965) was a Jewish pianist born in Kamianets-Podilskyi, Podolskaya Guberniya, Russian Empire, now Ukraine.
Biography
Leo Sirota began studying piano at the age of five. By the age of nine he w ...
and Augustine (Horenstein) Sirota. Leo, a
Ukrainian Jew, had fled war-torn
Russia and settled in
Austria. Her uncle was conductor
Jascha Horenstein
Jascha Horenstein (russian: Яша Горенштейн; – 2 April 1973) was an American conductor.
Biography
Horenstein was born in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine), into a well-to-do Jewish family; his mother (Marie Ettinger) came fr ...
. Sirota's family emigrated to
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...
in 1929, when Leo Sirota accepted an invitation to become a professor at the Imperial Academy of Music – now
Tokyo University of the Arts – in Tokyo.
[Dower, pp. 365-367] She attended the German School in Tokyo for six years, until the age of twelve, when she transferred to
American School in Japan (also in Tokyo) as a result of her parents deeming the German School "too Nazi".
Beate Sirota lived in Tokyo a total of ten years before she moved to
Oakland, California, in 1939 to attend
Mills College, where she was inducted into the
Phi Beta Kappa Society
The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal ar ...
, and graduated in 1943 with a
bachelor's degree in modern languages. She became a
naturalized U.S. citizen in January 1945.
World War II and Japan
During
World War II, Sirota was completely cut off from her parents in Japan. She later said that in the U.S. in 1940, she was one of only sixty-five
Caucasians who were fluent in
Japanese.
[Gordon, Beate Sirota. Commencement address at Mills College, May 14, 2011. "Sotomayor, Denzel Washington, GE CEO Speak to Graduates," C-SPAN (US). May 30, 2011; retrieved 2011-05-30.] During the war, she worked for the
Office of War Information in the
Foreign Broadcast Information Service of the
Federal Communications Commission. She also worked for ''
Time'' magazine.
As soon as the war ended, Sirota went to Japan in search of her parents, who survived the war as internees in
Karuizawa, Nagano.
On Christmas Eve, 1945,
she was the first civilian woman to arrive in post-war Japan. Assigned to the Political Affairs staff, she worked for
Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers
was the title held by General Douglas MacArthur during the United States-led Allied occupation of Japan following World War II. It issued SCAP Directives (alias SCAPIN, SCAP Index Number) to the Japanese government, aiming to suppress its "milit ...
(SCAP)
Douglas MacArthur
Douglas MacArthur (26 January 18805 April 1964) was an American military leader who served as General of the Army for the United States, as well as a field marshal to the Philippine Army. He had served with distinction in World War I, was C ...
's occupation army as a translator. In addition to Japanese, she was fluent in English, German, French, and Russian.
When the U.S. began drafting a new
constitution for Japan in February 1946,
Sirota was enlisted to help and was assigned to the subcommittee dedicated to writing the section of the constitution devoted to
civil rights.
She was one of only two women in the larger group, the other being economist
Eleanor Hadley
Eleanor Martha Hadley (July 17, 1916 – June 1, 2007) was an American economist and policymaker. Because of her relatively rare research specialization in Japanese economics, during World War II Hadley was recruited first into OSS and then ...
. Sirota played an integral role, drafting the language regarding legal equality between men and women in Japan,
including Articles 14 and 24 on Equal Rights and Women's Civil Rights. Article 14 states, in part: "All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin". Article 24 includes:
Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with the equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. 2) With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equality of the sexes.
These additions to the constitution were vital to women's rights in Japan. "Japanese women were historically treated like chattel; they were property to be bought and sold on a whim," Gordon said in 1999.
Sirota, as interpreter on MacArthur's staff, was the only woman present during the negotiations between the Japanese Steering Committee and the American team.
In 1947, Sirota was a target of Major General
Charles A. Willoughby
Charles Andrew Willoughby (March 8, 1892 – October 25, 1972) was a major general in the U.S. Army, serving as General Douglas MacArthur's chief of intelligence during most of World War II and the Korean War.
Early life and education
Willoughb ...
's year-long investigation of
leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
infiltration, in which he tried to construct a case against Sirota, charging her with advancing the
Communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
cause within the new government of Japan.
Performing arts
After returning to the United States with her parents,
in 1948,
Beate Sirota married Lieutenant Joseph Gordon, who had been chief of the interpreter–translator team for the military intelligence section at the
Allied Supreme Commander GHQ and was also present for the negotiations on the constitution. Settling in New York in 1947, she took a number of jobs, including one at
''Time'' magazine. Gordon eventually returned to her primary interest, the
performing arts
The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perform ...
. She had studied
ballet,
modern,
ethnic, and folk dance, as well as piano and drama in Tokyo and at Mills. While raising her two young children, she joined the reactivated Japan Society in New York City in 1954 as Director of Student Programs, providing career and job counseling to Japanese students in New York. One of the students was
Yoko Ono, with whom she maintained a lifelong friendship. She also worked with visual artists, arranging exhibits and lecture-demonstrations, including the first American visit of the renowned woodblock artist,
Shikō Munakata
was a woodblock printmaker active in Shōwa period Japan. He is associated with the '' sōsaku-hanga'' movement and the ''mingei'' (folk art) movement. Munakata was awarded the "Prize of Excellence" at the Second International Print Exhibition ...
. In 1958 she was appointed the Society's Director of Performing Arts. In this capacity she introduced a number of Japanese performing artists to the New York public, helping to develop many careers. Among these artists were
Toshi Ichiyanagi, now one of Japan's foremost composers and
Suzushi Hanayagi, whom she introduced to the theater director
Robert Wilson, with whom Hanayagi collaborated on the ''Knee Plays'', and other works. In addition, in 1960, Gordon became a consultant to the
Asia Society
The Asia Society is a non-profit organization that focuses on educating the world about Asia. It has several centers in the United States (Manhattan, Washington, D.C., Houston, Los Angeles, and San Francisco) and around the world (Hong Kong, Man ...
performing arts program, expanding her activities from Japan to the other countries of Asia.
Gordon was also a consultant and adviser to producers such as
Harold Prince for his production of the
Stephen Sondheim
Stephen Joshua Sondheim (; March 22, 1930November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in twentieth-century musical theater, Sondheim is credited for having "reinvented the American musical" with sho ...
musical, ''
Pacific Overtures''. In the early 1960s, she was influential in bringing
koto
Koto may refer to:
* Koto (band), an Italian synth pop group
* Koto (instrument), a Japanese musical instrument
* Koto (kana), a ligature of two Japanese katakana
* Koto (traditional clothing), a traditional dress made by Afro-Surinamese women
* ...
music to the attention of Americans by introducing composer
Henry Cowell
Henry Dixon Cowell (; March 11, 1897 – December 10, 1965) was an American composer, writer, pianist, publisher and teacher. Marchioni, Tonimarie (2012)"Henry Cowell: A Life Stranger Than Fiction" ''The Juilliard Journal''. Retrieved 19 June 202 ...
to the great Japanese koto player,
Kimio Eto
(surname Etō, born 1924 in Ōita – died 24 December 2012) was a blind Japanese musician who played the ''koto''. He began musical training at the age of eight with the renowned master Michio Miyagi. When he was eleven, he composed his first ...
. Cowell subsequently wrote a concerto for koto and orchestra for Eto which was presented by
Leopold Stokowski and the
Philadelphia Orchestra
The Philadelphia Orchestra is an American symphony orchestra, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. One of the " Big Five" American orchestras, the orchestra is based at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, where it performs its subscription ...
in New York,
Philadelphia, and on tour. Gordon also produced the first Asian performances at the
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts
Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (also simply known as Lincoln Center) is a complex of buildings in the Lincoln Square neighborhood on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It has thirty indoor and outdoor facilities and is host to 5 millio ...
.
Gordon's travels in search of authentic performing arts from Asia took her to such remote areas as
Purulia in
West Bengal,
India, and
Kuching
Kuching (), officially the City of Kuching, is the capital and the most populous city in the States and federal territories of Malaysia, state of Sarawak in Malaysia. It is also the capital of Kuching Division. The city is on the Sarawak River ...
in
Sarawak,
Malaysia, where she sought out indigenous performing artists to bring to universities, museums, and other cultural venues in New York and across the United States and Canada. Over the years, Gordon produced 39 tours by 34 companies from 16 countries. These performances, which were seen by an estimated 1.5 million Americans in some 400 cities and towns in 42 states, brought new ways of experiencing Asian performing arts to audiences throughout the country. They also intensified the post-World War II Asian influence on American art, design, music, literature, and theater.
For the media, Gordon produced and hosted a series of 12 half-hour programs on the Japanese arts broadcast on New York's
Channel 13 and served as commentator for a series of four hour-long programs featuring traditional and popular music from Japan, China, India, and
Thailand which were broadcast on
Channel 31, New York City's municipal television station. She also produced 29 video tapes and five films televised nationally. For the
Nonesuch Records Explorer Series, she produced eight albums of Asian music. Gordon served on the panel of, and was subsequently a consultant for, the Dance Program of the
National Endowment for the Arts. She was also the Associate Editor in charge of the Asian Dance section of the ''International Encyclopedia of Dance'' published by
Oxford University Press in February, 1998.
Honors, retirement and legacy
For her work as an arts presenter, and for associated activities such as production of video tapes, records, and scholarly monographs on various Asian art forms, Gordon received numerous awards, among them the
American Dance Guild
The American Dance Guild (A.D.G.) was founded in 1956, as the Dance Teachers' Guild by twelve dance teachers in New York City to promote the art of dance in the United States by educating the American public and by maintaining standards of teach ...
Award (1978), two Dance on Camera Festival Awards (1984, 1985), an
Obie Award
The Obie Awards or Off-Broadway Theater Awards are annual awards originally given by ''The Village Voice'' newspaper to theatre artists and groups in New York City. In September 2014, the awards were jointly presented and administered with the A ...
for the introduction of
Samul Nori to the United States (1985); a
Bessie Award (1990) which cited her "for beating an ever-widening path between the cultures of East and West and for understanding the essential creative dialectic between tradition and experimentation and the fundamental partnership of artists involved in both"; the 2005 Ryoko Akamatsu Award, the Avon Grand Award to Women's Award (1997), and the John D. Rockefeller Award from the
Asian Cultural Council (1997) which gave "recognition of your extraordinary contributions in introducing American scholars, artists, and general audiences to the performing arts of Asia and in increasing the American understanding and appreciation of Asian dance, theater, and music traditions."
Gordon retired from the directorship at the Asia Society in 1991, continuing as Senior Consultant for Performing Arts until July 1993. She received an Honorary
Doctor of Fine Arts degree from Mills College in 1991, and the President's Medal from the
College of the City of New York in 1992. In November 1998 she received the
Order of the Sacred Treasure
The is a Japanese order, established on 4 January 1888 by Emperor Meiji as the Order of Meiji. Originally awarded in eight classes (from 8th to 1st, in ascending order of importance), since 2003 it has been awarded in six classes, the lowest ...
, Gold Rays with Rosette, from the Japanese government. She also received an honorary
Doctor of Law degree from
Smith College
Smith College is a Private university, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts Women's colleges in the United States, women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith (Smith College ...
in 2008, and was awarded an honorary
Ph.D. from Mills College in 2011, where a collection of her papers now resides.
The Japanese television network,
Asahi Broadcasting Corporation
is a certified broadcasting holding company headquartered in Osaka, Japan. Until March 31, 2018, it was a unified radio and television broadcaster serving in the Kansai region.
On April 1, 2018, its radio and television broadcasting divisions ...
(ABC), produced a 90-minute documentary on Gordon's life, first broadcast in Japan on May 22, 1993. A Japanese-language biography, ''Christmas 1945: The Biography of the Woman Who Wrote the Equal Rights Clause of the Japanese Constitution'', was published on October 20, 1995. The English version of this book was published in March 1998 under the title ''The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir''. A play based on Gordon's role in writing the Japanese constitution, ''A String of Pearls'' by James Miki, was performed by the Seinen Gekijo in Tokyo, in April 1998. Gordon also lectured extensively in the United States and in Japan on her role in writing the Japanese constitution.
The film ''The Sirota Family and the 20th Century'', produced by Tomoko Fujiwara, made its debut in the West in
Paris in April 2009. It is the story of Gordon's father's family and their flight from Europe into the
diaspora
A diaspora ( ) is a population that is scattered across regions which are separate from its geographic place of origin. Historically, the word was used first in reference to the dispersion of Greeks in the Hellenic world, and later Jews after ...
.
Minor planet
5559 Beategordon discovered by
Eleanor Helin is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by the
Minor Planet Center
The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the official body for observing and reporting on minor planets under the auspices of the International Astronomical Union (IAU). Founded in 1947, it operates at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory.
Function
...
on 8 November 2019 ().
Jeff Gottesfeld
Howard Jeffrey Gottesfeld (born 1956) is an American novelist, playwright, and screen and television writer. In recent years he has focused on writing texts for picture books for children, grades two and up.
Biography
Gottesfeld grew up in Te ...
published a 2020 book for children, celebrating Gordon's activism and documenting the historical struggle for equal rights.
Death
Gordon died of
pancreatic cancer
Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of t ...
at her home in
Manhattan,
New York City on December 30, 2012, at the age of 89. Her last public statement was to urge that the peace and women's rights clauses of the Japanese Constitution be preserved.
Her husband, Joseph Gordon, had died four months earlier, on August 29, 2012, at the age of 93.
["Obituary: Joseph Gordon"](_blank)
'' The New York Times'' (August 31, 2012)
Selected works
In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Gordon,
OCLC
OCLC, Inc., doing business as OCLC, See also: is an American nonprofit cooperative organization "that provides shared technology services, original research, and community programs for its membership and the library community at large". It was ...
/
WorldCat encompasses roughly 150+ works in 150+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.
WorldCat Identities
Gordon, Beate
/ref>
* ''Introduction to Asian Dance'' (1964)
* ''An Introduction to the Dance of India, China, Korea ndJapan'' (1965)
* 1945年のクリスマス: 日本国憲法に「男女平等」を書いた女性の自伝 (1995)
* ''The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir'' (1997)
Oral histories
* ''The Reminiscences of Faubion Bowers'' by Faubion Bowers
Faubion Bowers (January 29, 1917 – November 17, 1999) was an American academic and writer in the area of Asian Studies, especially Japanese theatre. He also wrote the first full-length biography of Russian composer Alexander Scriabin. During t ...
(1960), with Beate Gordon
* ''The reminiscences of Cyrus H. Peake'' by Cyrus Peake (1961), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Esther Crane'' by Esther Crane (1961), with Beate Gordon
* ''Occupation of Japan Project'' by Eugene Dooman (1970), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Japanese Reminiscences of Roger Baldwin'' by Roger Nash Baldwin (1974), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Burton Crane'' by Burton Crane (1974), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Douglas W. Overton'' by Douglas Overton (1974), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Joseph Gordon'' by Joseph Gordon (1974), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Harold G. Henderson'' by Harold Gould Henderson (1976), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of Dr. Lauren V. Ackerman'' by Lauren Ackerman (1976), with Beate Gordon
* ''The Reminiscences of John R. Harold'' by John R. Harold (1976), with Beate Gordon
References
Notes
Bibliography
* Bendersky, Joseph W. (2000). ''The Jewish Threat: Anti-Semitic Politics of the U.S. Army''. New York: Basic Books. ;
OCLC 44089138
* Dower, John W. (1999). ''Embracing Defeat.'' New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1999. ;
OCLC 39143090
* Gordon, Beate Sirota. (1995). ''1945 Nen no Kurisumasu'' 1945年のクリスマス』). Tokyo: Kashiwashobo.
OCLC 36090237
* Gordon, Beate Sirota. (1997). ''The Only Woman in the Room: a Memoir''. Tokyo: Kodansha International.
OCLC 38588852
* Azimi, Nassrine and Wasserman, Michel. (2015). ''Last Boat to Yokohama: The Life and Legacy of Beate Sirota Gordon''. New York: Three Rooms Press.
OCLC 890068430
External links
by Kuniko Fujisawa, Temple University Japan
* by Lindi Geisenheimer, American School in Japan
* (Sunshine for Women)
9-minute podcast from BBC World Service Witness History “The American who put women's rights in the Japanese constitution”
Broadcast on Fri 7 Aug 2020 22:50 local time BBC WORLD SERVICE; also downloadable from: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/witness-history/id339986758?i=1000488665375
{{DEFAULTSORT:Gordon, Beate Sirota
1923 births
2012 deaths
Japanese Jews
Mills College alumni
American expatriates in Japan
Austrian emigrants to Japan
Austrian Jews
Austrian people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent
Austrian emigrants to the United States
People from Währing
Deaths from pancreatic cancer
Deaths from cancer in New York (state)
American School in Japan alumni
Recipients of the Order of the Sacred Treasure, 4th class
Japanese women activists
Japanese women's rights activists
Naturalized citizens of the United States
People of the United States Office of War Information