Beate Sirota Gordon (1923–2012)
Author of The Only Woman in the Room
About the Author
Beate Sirota Gordon (1923-2012) was an Austrian-born American performing arts impresario. Following her work on the Japanese Constitution, Gordon devoted her life to bringing the arts of Asia to the United States. She would receive many honorary degrees and awards, including an Obie, an American show more Dance Guild Award, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government. show less
Works by Beate Sirota Gordon
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1923-10-25
- Date of death
- 2012-12-30
- Gender
- female
- Nationality
- Austria
USA - Birthplace
- Vienna, Austria
- Place of death
- Manhattan, New York, USA
- Places of residence
- Manhattan, New York, USA
Vienna, Austria
Tokyo, Japan - Education
- German School, Tokyo, Japan
American School, Tokyo, Japan
Mills College - Occupations
- performing arts presenter
women's rights activist
memoirist - Awards and honors
- Order of the Sacred Treasure (1998)
- Short biography
- Beate Sirota Gordon was born in Vienna, Austria, to a Russian Jewish immigrant family. Her parents were Augustine (Horenstein) and Leo Sirota, a concert pianist. Her maternal uncle was conductor Jascha Horenstein. The Sirota family went to Japan in 1929, when her father was invited to teach at the Imperial Academy of Music in Tokyo. Mr. Sirota soon became a revered performer and teacher there, and the family stayed in Tokyo for more than a decade. Beate was educated at a German school in Tokyo until the mid-1930s, when it became Nazified, and then attended the American School in Japan. She became fluent in English, Japanese, German, French, Spanish, and Russian. In 1939, shortly before her 16th birthday, she left for the USA to attend Mills College in Oakland, California. Her parents remained in Japan. In December 1941, after the attack on Pearl Harbor and the USA's entry into World War II, it became impossible to contact Japan. Beate had no word from her parents, and no money. She was permitted by Mills College to take her examinations without having to attend all her classes and graduated in 1943 with a bachelor's degree in modern languages. She got a job at a U.S. government listening post in San Francisco, monitoring radio broadcasts from Tokyo. She later worked for the U.S. Office of War Information, writing radio scripts urging Japan to surrender. She went to Washington, DC, where she obtained a position as an interpreter on General Douglas MacArthur's staff. Arriving in Tokyo with the U.S. Army after Japan's surrender in 1945 she went immediately to her family's house but found only burned ruins. She was eventually reunited with her parents, who had been interned in the countryside, and took them to Tokyo, where she nursed them back to health while working for MacArthur. One of the General's top priorities was drafting a new Constitution for postwar Japan, a top-secret assignment begun in February 1946 that had to be finished in seven days. Beate Sirota, the only woman assigned to the constitutional committee, was deputized to compose the section on women's rights. So at 22, almost single-handedly, she wrote women's rights into the Constitution of modern Japan. Her work on Article 14, "Basic Human Rights" and
Article 24, "The Essential Equality of the Sexes," gave Japanese women a set of legal rights for the first time in their history. Ms. Sirota Gordon later embarked on a career as a prominent cultural impresario. In the 1950s, she joined the staff of the Japan Society in New York, becoming its director of performing arts. In that capacity, she introduced many Japanese artists to the West, including masters of traditional music, dance, woodblock printing, and the tea ceremony. In 1970, she became director of performing arts at the Asia Society in New York. She brought many Asian artists to stages throughout North America. She retired in 1991 as the society's director of performances, films and lectures. Her memoir, The Only Woman in the Room, published in Japanese in 1995 and in English two years later, made her a celebrity in Japan, where she lectured widely, made appearences on television, and was the subject of a stage play and a 2004 documentary film called The Gift From Beate. Ms. Gordon was awarded the Order of the Sacred Treasure by the Japanese government in 1998.
Members
Reviews
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Statistics
- Works
- 1
- Members
- 45
- Popularity
- #340,917
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 3
- ISBNs
- 4