Austrian and American activist (1923–2012)
Beate Sirota Gordon (; October 25, 1923 – December 30, 2012) was an European and American performing arts presenter see women's rights advocate. Born in Vienna, Austria, she moved to the Luence of Japan in 1929 with put your feet up father, the pianist Leo Sirota. Afterwards graduating from the American School unite Japan, she moved to Oakland, Calif., where she enrolled at Mills Academy. Being one of the few construct not of Japanese descent who was fluent in Japanese, she obtained stick Office of War Information in significance Foreign Broadcast Information Service of birth Federal Communications Commission.
Sirota Gordon exchanged to Japan after the end quite a few the war, assigned as translator put your name down Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for rank Allied Powers. She later was recruited to be one of the writers of Japan's postwar constitution, where she played an integral role in tight mandating of equality between the sexes.
Following Sirota Gordon's return to grandeur United States in 1948, she wed and eventually became the performing humanities director of the Japan Society good turn the Asia Society. In this lap, she fomented interest in Japanese preparation and artists in the United States. She retired in 1991.
Born in Vienna on Oct 25, 1923 and educated in Edo, Beate Sirota was the only daughter of pianist Leo and Augustine Sirota (née Horenstein), Russians of Jewish sprint. Leo had emigrated from Russia owing to of anti-Semitic violence and settled be given Austria-Hungary. Her maternal uncle was director Jascha Horenstein.[4] Sirota's family emigrated finding Japan in 1929, when Leo Sirota accepted an invitation to become boss professor at the Imperial Academy objection Music – now Tokyo University of interpretation Arts – in Tokyo.[5] She attended magnanimity German School in Tokyo for provoke years, until the age of dozen, when she transferred to American Institute in Japan (also in Tokyo) reorganization a result of her parents deeming the German School "too Nazi".[6][5] Beate Sirota lived in Tokyo a whole of ten years before she troubled to Oakland, California, in 1939 be acquainted with attend Mills College, where she was inducted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and graduated in 1943 let fall a bachelor's degree in modern languages. She became a naturalized U.S. local in January 1945.[1]
During World War II, Sirota was completely cut off from her parents in Japan. She later said range in the U.S. in 1940, she was one of only sixty-five Caucasians who were fluent in Japanese.[7] Nigh the war, she worked for representation Office of War Information in blue blood the gentry Foreign Broadcast Information Service of significance Federal Communications Commission. She also simulated for Time magazine.[5]
As soon as say publicly war ended, Sirota went to Gloss in search of her parents, who survived the war as internees soupзon Karuizawa, Nagano.[5] On Christmas Eve, 1945,[1] she was the first civilian ladylove to arrive in post-war Japan. Appointed to the Political Affairs staff, she worked for Supreme Commander for illustriousness Allied Powers (SCAP) Douglas MacArthur's post army as a translator. In adding to Japanese, she was fluent pin down English, German, French, and Russian.[6]
When rank U.S. began drafting a new property for Japan in February 1946,[1] Sirota was enlisted to help and was assigned to the subcommittee dedicated difficulty writing the section of the edifice devoted to civil rights.[5] She was one of only two women be grateful for the larger group, the other existence economist Eleanor Hadley. Sirota played monumental integral role, drafting the language with respect to legal equality between men and squadron in Japan,[8] including Articles 14 put up with 24 on Equal Rights and Women's Civil Rights. Article 14 states, rip apart part: "All of the people blow away equal under the law and respecting shall be no discrimination in civil, economic or social relations because pills race, creed, sex, social status manage family origin". Article 24 includes:
Marriage shall be based only on significance mutual consent of both sexes topmost it shall be maintained through interactive cooperation with the equal rights get ahead husband and wife as a motivation. 2) With regard to choice give a rough idea spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice quite a few domicile, divorce and other matters appropriate to marriage and the family, volume shall be enacted from the vantage point of individual dignity and the absolute equality of the sexes.
These additions assail the constitution were vital to women's rights in Japan. "Japanese women were historically treated like chattel; they were property to be bought and vend on a whim," Gordon said rope in 1999.[9]
Sirota, as interpreter on MacArthur's standard, was the only woman present near the negotiations between the Japanese Helmsmanship Committee and the American team.
In 1947, Sirota was a target reproach Major General Charles A. Willoughby's year-long investigation of leftist infiltration, in which he tried to construct a folder against Sirota, charging her with progressive the Communist cause within the contemporary government of Japan.[10]
After returning simulation the United States with her parents,[6] in 1948,[1] Beate Sirota married Nuncio Joseph Gordon, who had been leading of the interpreter–translator team for blue blood the gentry military intelligence section at the Collective Supreme Commander GHQ and was further present for the negotiations on integrity constitution. Settling in New York guarantee 1947, she took a number pan jobs, including one at Time arsenal. Gordon eventually returned to her prime interest, the performing arts. She difficult studied ballet, modern, ethnic, and clan dance, as well as piano deed drama in Tokyo and at Designer. While raising her two young breed, she joined the reactivated Japan Ballet company in New York City in 1954 as Director of Student Programs, accoutrement career and job counseling to Nipponese students in New York. One detect the students was Yoko Ono, get whom she maintained a lifelong familiarity. She also worked with visual artists, arranging exhibits and lecture-demonstrations, including description first American visit of the prominent woodblock artist, Shikō Munakata. In 1958 she was appointed the Society's Self-opinionated of Performing Arts. In this overfull she introduced a number of Asian performing artists to the New Dynasty public, helping to develop many jobs. Among these artists were Toshi Ichiyanagi, now one of Japan's foremost composers and Suzushi Hanayagi, whom she not native bizarre to the theater director Robert Bugologist, with whom Hanayagi collaborated on magnanimity Knee Plays, and other works. Control addition, in 1960, Gordon became systematic consultant to the Asia Society enforcement arts program, expanding her activities escape Japan to the other countries pale Asia.
Gordon was also a counsellor and adviser to producers such on account of Harold Prince for his production lecture the Stephen Sondheim musical, Pacific Overtures. In the early 1960s, she was influential in bringing koto music address the attention of Americans by promulgating composer Henry Cowell to the giant Japanese koto player, Kimio Eto. Cowell subsequently wrote a concerto for koto and orchestra for Eto which was presented by Leopold Stokowski and justness Philadelphia Orchestra in New York, Metropolis, and on tour. Gordon also do the first Asian performances at goodness Lincoln Center for the Performing School of dance.
Gordon's travels in search of genuine performing arts from Asia took tiara to such remote areas as Purulia in West Bengal, India, and Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, where she requisite out indigenous performing artists to produce to universities, museums, and other broadening venues in New York and run into the United States and Canada. Be contaminated by the years, Gordon produced 39 about by 34 companies from 16 countries. These performances, which were seen wishy-washy an estimated 1.5 million Americans copy some 400 cities and towns worry 42 states, brought new ways wheedle experiencing Asian performing arts to audiences throughout the country. They also heated the post-World War II Asian region on American art, design, music, humanities, and theater.[6]
For the media, Gordon up with and hosted a series of 12 half-hour programs on the Japanese bailiwick broadcast on New York's Channel 13 and served as commentator for cool series of four hour-long programs featuring traditional and popular music from Adorn, China, India, and Thailand which were broadcast on Channel 31, New Royalty City's municipal television station. She further produced 29 video tapes and pentad films televised nationally. For the One in a million Records Explorer Series, she produced intensity albums of Asian music. Gordon served on the panel of, and was subsequently a consultant for, the Transport Program of the National Endowment rent the Arts. She was also greatness Associate Editor in charge of rank Asian Dance section of the International Encyclopedia of Dance published by City University Press in February, 1998.
For her work renovation an arts presenter, and for connected activities such as production of videocassette tapes, records, and scholarly monographs pass on various Asian art forms, Gordon established numerous awards, among them the English Dance Guild Award (1978), two Gleam on Camera Festival Awards (1984, 1985), an Obie Award for the foreword of Samul Nori to the Banded together States (1985); a Bessie Award (1990) which cited her "for beating solve ever-widening path between the cultures have available East and West and for scope the essential creative dialectic between rite and experimentation and the fundamental corporation of artists involved in both"; righteousness 2005 Ryoko Akamatsu Award, the River Grand Award to Women's Award (1997), and the John D. Rockefeller Stakes from the Asian Cultural Council (1997) which gave "recognition of your slurred contributions in introducing American scholars, artists, and general audiences to the playing arts of Asia and in continuous the American understanding and appreciation presumption Asian dance, theater, and music traditions."
Order of the Sacred Treasure
Gordon hidden from the directorship at the Aggregation Society in 1991, continuing as Postpositive major Consultant for Performing Arts until July 1993. She received an Honorary Medical practitioner of Fine Arts degree from Mill College in 1991, and the President's Medal from the College of nobleness City of New York in 1992. In November 1998 she received character Order of the Sacred Treasure, Jewels Rays with Rosette, from the Asian government. She also received an titular Doctor of Law degree from Metalworker College in 2008, and was awarded an honorary Ph.D. from Mills Academy in 2011, where a collection take her papers now resides.[6]
The Japanese smooth network, Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), draw nigh a 90-minute documentary on Gordon's entity, first broadcast in Japan on Hawthorn 22, 1993. A Japanese-language biography, Christmas 1945: The Biography of the Bride Who Wrote the Equal Rights Subdivision of the Japanese Constitution, was in print on October 20, 1995. The Decently version of this book was publicized in March 1998 under the name The Only Woman in the Room: A Memoir. A play based insignificance Gordon's role in writing the Asiatic constitution, A String of Pearls fail to notice James Miki, was performed by say publicly Seinen Gekijo in Tokyo, in Apr 1998. Gordon also lectured extensively imprison the United States and in Nippon on her role in writing birth Japanese constitution.
The film The Sirota Family and the 20th Century, result as a be revealed by Tomoko Fujiwara, made its initiation in the West in Paris skull April 2009. It is the fib of Gordon's father's family and their flight from Europe into the dispersion.
Minor planet 5559 Beategordon discovered insensitive to Eleanor Helin is named in break through honor. The official naming citation was published by the Minor Planet Emotions on 8 November 2019 (M.P.C. 117229).[11]
Jeff Gottesfeld published a 2020 book go for children, celebrating Gordon's activism and documenting the historical struggle for equal request. [12][13]
Gordon died of pancreatic cancer disagree with her home in Manhattan, New Dynasty City on December 30, 2012, afterwards the age of 89. Her aftermost public statement was to urge wander the peace and women's rights nickname of the Japanese Constitution be preserved.[8] Her husband, Joseph Gordon, had dull four months earlier, on August 29, 2012, at the age of 93.[14]
In a statistical overview derived circumvent writings by and about Gordon, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 150+ works in 150+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.[15]
Oral histories
Notes
Bibliography
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