Beate Sirota

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Beate Sirota (2011)

Beate Sirota Gordon (born October 25, 1923 in Vienna , † December 30, 2012 in New York ) was an Austrian - American presenter of the performing arts and a suffragette . She was founder and director of the Department of Performing Arts of Japan Society and the Asia Society and one of the last surviving members of the team led by Douglas MacArthur , the Constitution of Japan after World War II wrote.

biography

Beate Sirota was the only child of the pianist Leo Sirota (1885–1965) and of Augustine nee. Horenstein. Her father was a Ukrainian Jew. Her maternal uncle was the conductor Jascha Horenstein . The father fled from war-torn Russia to Austria. She lived at Währinger Strasse 58. The family emigrated again to Japan in 1929 when Leo Sirota accepted an invitation to be a professor at the Imperial Music Academy in Tokyo. She attended the German School in Tokyo for six years and then switched to the American School as the German School became increasingly Nazi. Beate Sirota lived in Tokyo for a total of ten years before moving to Oakland , California in 1939 to study at Mills College . She graduated with a bachelor's degree in modern languages ​​in 1943. It was naturalized in January 1945 . During World War II, Sirota was completely separated from her parents in Japan. During this time she worked for the United States Office of War Information (OWI), the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS), the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Time magazine .

As soon as the war ended, Sirota went to Japan to find her parents who had survived the war imprisonment in Karuizawa , Nagano Prefecture . Because of her knowledge of Japanese, she was assigned to the Political Staff of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) by Douglas MacArthur. In addition to Japanese, she was fluent in English, German, French and Russian.

For the preparations for the new constitution, she was assigned a role in a sub-committee that dealt with civil rights . The working group was under great time pressure: the order was placed on February 4, 1946 by General Courtney Whitney ; the draft had to be available on February 12th. Beate Sirota was one of only two women in the larger group, the other was the economist Eleanor Hadley . She campaigned for legal equality between men and women in the constitution, especially Articles 14 and 24 can be traced back to her work. It took over the main features of Article 109 of the Weimar Constitution .

Sirota kept silent about her crucial role in shaping the new constitution for almost the rest of her life. In 1991 she became head of the Asia Society and was committed to intercultural exchange. Her role in the work on the new Japanese constitution was not revealed until 1994.

In recognition of her role in drafting the constitution, she was awarded the Officer's Cross of the Order of the Holy Treasure by the Japanese government in November 1998 . On November 8, 2019, an asteroid was named after her: (5559) Beategordon .

Works (selection)

  • Introduction to Asian Dance (1964)
  • An Introduction to the Dance of India, China, Korea [and] Japan (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 , Tokyo 1997, ISBN 4-7700-2145-3 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ obituary on the side of Japan Society (Engl.) , Accessed 19 January 2013 at
  2. ↑ Irene Suchy: Committed border crosser. wienerzeitung.at, January 15, 2013, accessed on March 25, 2013
  3. ↑ a b Margalit Fox: Beate Gordon, Long-Unsung Heroine of Japanese Women's Rights, Dies at 89th Obituary, nytimes, com, January 2, 2013, accessed May 30, 2013
  4. ^ The only woman in the room. P. 104 f.
  5. ^ The only woman in the room. P. 110
  6. ^ Jurek Martin: Champion of women's right in Japan. ft.com, January 4, 2013, accessed March 25, 2013
  7. ↑ The Minor Planet Circulars of November 8, 2019, page 118218 (PDF, 6.3 MB; English)
personal data
SURNAME Sirota, Beate
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Sirota Gordon, Beate
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American presenter of performing arts and women's rights activist
DATE OF BIRTH October 25, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 30, 2012
Place of death new York