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Beate Sirota Gordon | |
|---|---|
 Gordon at the Japan Society in 2011 | |
| Born | Beate Sirota (1923-10-25)October 25, 1923 Vienna,Austria |
| Died | December 30, 2012(2012-12-30) (aged 89) Manhattan, New York City, U.S.[1] |
| Citizenship | United States[2] |
| Alma mater | Mills College |
| Occupation | Performing arts presenter |
| Years active | 1943–2012 |
| Organizations | |
| Spouse | |
| Children | 2 |
| Parents |
|
| Relatives | Jascha Horenstein (uncle) |
| Awards |
|
Beate Sirota Gordon (/beɪˈɑːteɪ/; October 25, 1923 – December 30, 2012) was an Austrian and American performing arts presenter and women's rights advocate. Born in Vienna, Austria, she moved to theEmpire of Japan in 1929 with her father, the pianistLeo Sirota. After graduating from theAmerican School in Japan, she moved toOakland, California, where she enrolled atMills College. Being one of the few people not of Japanese descent who was fluent in Japanese, she obtained work at theOffice of War Information in theForeign Broadcast Information Service of theFederal Communications Commission.
Sirota Gordon returned to Japan after the end of the war, assigned as translator toDouglas MacArthur,Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers. She later was recruited to be one of the writers ofJapan's postwar constitution, where she played an integral role in its mandating of equality between the sexes.
Following Sirota Gordon's return to the United States in 1948, she married and eventually became the performing arts director of theJapan Society and theAsia Society. In this role, she fomented interest in Japanese art and artists in the United States. She retired in 1991.
Born inVienna on October 25, 1923, Beate Sirota was the only child of the pianistLeo and Augustine Sirota (née Horenstein), Russians of Jewish descent.[3] Leo had emigrated from Russia because ofthe country's anti-Semitic violence and settled inAustria-Hungary. Beate's maternal uncle was the conductorJascha Horenstein.[4]
Sirota's family emigrated to Japan in 1929, when Leo Sirota accepted an invitation to become a professor at the Imperial Academy of Music (which becameTokyo University of the Arts).[5] Her childhood education was in Tokyo: first at the German School in Tokyo for six years until age twelve, and then at theAmerican School in Japan because her parents determined the German School was "tooNazi".[6][5]
In 1939, Beate Sirota left Tokyo forOakland, California, US, to attendMills College. She was inducted intoPhi Beta Kappa society and graduated in 1943 with abachelor's degree in modern languages. She became anaturalized U.S. citizen in January 1945.[1]
DuringWorld 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-fiveCaucasians who were fluent inJapanese.[7] During the war, she worked for theOffice of War Information in theForeign Broadcast Information Service of theFederal Communications Commission. She also worked forTime magazine.[5]
As soon as the war ended, Sirota went to Japan in search of her parents, who survived the war as internees inKaruizawa, Nagano.[5] On Christmas Eve, 1945,[1] she was the first civilian woman to arrive in post-war Japan. Assigned to the Political Affairs staff, she worked forSupreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)Douglas MacArthur's occupation army as a translator. In addition to Japanese, she was fluent in English, German, French, and Russian.[6]
When the U.S. began drafting a newconstitution for Japan in February 1946,[1] Sirota was enlisted to help and was assigned to the subcommittee dedicated to writing the section of the constitution devoted tocivil rights.[5] She was one of only two women in the larger group, the other being economistEleanor Hadley. Sirota played an integral role, drafting the language regarding legal equality between men and women in Japan,[8] 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.[9]
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 GeneralCharles A. Willoughby's year-long investigation ofleftist infiltration, in which he tried to construct a case against Sirota, charging her with advancing thecommunist cause within the new government of Japan.[10]
After returning to the US with her parents[6] in 1948,[1] Beate Sirota married Lieutenant Joseph Gordon, who had been chief of the interpreter–translator team for the military intelligence section at theAllied 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 atTime magazine. Gordon eventually returned to her primary interest, theperforming arts. She had studiedballet,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 wasYoko 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. 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 wereToshi Ichiyanagi, now one of Japan's foremost composers andSuzushi Hanayagi, whom she introduced to the theater directorRobert Wilson, with whom Hanayagi collaborated on theKnee Plays, and other works. In addition, in 1960, Gordon became a consultant to theAsia Society performing arts program, expanding her activities from Japan to the other countries of Asia.
Gordon served as a consultant and adviser to producers such asHarold Prince for his production of theStephen Sondheim musical,Pacific Overtures. In the early 1960s, she was influential in bringingkoto music to the attention of Americans by introducing composerHenry Cowell to the great Japanese koto player,Kimio Eto. Cowell subsequently wrote a concerto for koto and orchestra for Eto which was presented byLeopold Stokowski and thePhiladelphia Orchestra in New York,Philadelphia, and on tour. Gordon also produced the first Asian performances at theLincoln Center for the Performing Arts.
Gordon's travels in search of authentic performing arts from Asia took her to such remote areas asPurulia inWest Bengal,India, andKuching inSarawak,Malaysia, where she sought out indigenous performing artists to bring to universities, museums, and other cultural venues in New York and across the US and Canada.
Over the years, Gordon produced 39 tours by 34 companies from 16 countries. An estimated 1.5 million Americans in 400 cities and towns in 42 states observed these performances, which 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.[6]
For the media, Gordon produced and hosted a series of 12 half-hour programs on the Japanese arts broadcast on New York'sChannel 13 and served as commentator for a series of four hour-long programs featuring traditional and popular music from Japan, China, India, andThailand which were broadcast onChannel 31, New York City's municipal television station. She also produced 29 video tapes and five films televised nationally. For theNonesuch 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 theNational Endowment for the Arts. She was also the Associate Editor in charge of the Asian Dance section of theInternational Encyclopedia of Dance published byOxford University Press in February, 1998.
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 theAmerican Dance Guild Award (1978), two Dance on Camera Festival Awards (1984, 1985), anObie Award for the introduction ofSamul Nori to the United States (1985); aBessie 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 theAsian 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."
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Gordon retired from the directorship at the Asia Society in 1991, continuing as Senior Consultant for Performing Arts until July 1993. She received an HonoraryDoctor of Fine Arts degree from Mills College in 1991, and the President's Medal from theCollege of the City of New York in 1992. In November 1998 she received theOrder of the Sacred Treasure, Gold Rays with Rosette, from the Japanese government. She also received an honoraryDoctor of Law degree fromSmith College in 2008, and was awarded an honoraryPh.D. from Mills College in 2011, where a collection of her papers now resides.[6]
The Japanese television network,Asahi Broadcasting Corporation (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 titleThe 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 filmThe Sirota Family and the 20th Century, produced by Tomoko Fujiwara, made its debut in the West inParis in April 2009. It is the story of Gordon's father's family and their flight from Europe into thediaspora.
The asteroid5559 Beategordon, discovered byEleanor Helin, is named in her honor. The official naming citation was published by theMinor Planet Center on November 8, 2019 (M.P.C. 117229).[11]
Jeff Gottesfeld published a 2020 book for children, celebrating Gordon's activism and documenting the historical struggle for equal rights.[12][13]
Gordon died ofpancreatic cancer at her home inManhattan,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.[8] Her husband, Joseph Gordon, had died four months earlier, on August 29, 2012, at the age of 93.[14]
In a statistical overview derived from 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
Correction: January 4, 2013
Bibliography
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