Beate, pho­to cred­it to ABC, from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Michi­gan website

I read every­thing. I mean, every­thing. It’s how I find the next book idea.

It’s how I came to read this obit­u­ary in the New York Times on Jan­u­ary 2, 2013, with a grow­ing mix of excite­ment, dis­ap­point­ment, and awe.

How had I nev­er heard of the obit’s sub­ject, Beate Siro­ta Gor­don? How was I unaware of this Jew­ish woman born in Vien­na, who had moved to Japan at age five, spoke per­fect Japan­ese, and had been respon­si­ble, at the age of twen­ty-two, for both women’s rights claus­es in the post-World War II Japan­ese Constitution?

I did, how­ev­er, learn about Beate’s (pro­nounced Bay-AH-tay) incred­i­ble life. She was the daugh­ter of the cel­e­brat­ed Russ­ian-Jew­ish pianist Leo Siro­ta (whose record­ings can still be heard on Youtube).

Leo came to Vien­na, Aus­tria, around the time of the 1904 pogroms in Ukraine, and mar­ried Augus­tine Horen­stein, broth­er to the great con­duc­tor Jascha Horen­stein. Beate was born in 1923.

In 1929, just before the Depres­sion struck, Leo brought the fam­i­ly to Japan to teach and con­cer­tize. It was to be a few months; it end­ed up being years. While they were in Tokyo, the Nazis rose in Ger­many and Aus­tria. The fam­i­ly was ren­dered state­less in the Anschluss. The Siro­ta fam­i­ly was for­tu­nate to make it to Japan, as extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers were lost in the Holocaust.

The fam­i­ly was ren­dered state­less in the Anschluss. The Siro­ta fam­i­ly was for­tu­nate to make it to Japan, as extend­ed fam­i­ly mem­bers were lost in the Holocaust.

Beate at Mills Col­lege, 1942

Young Beate took to Japan with a keen mind, open heart, and innate gift for lan­guages. She made Japan­ese friends, learned to speak idiomat­ic Japan­ese (plus Eng­lish, French, and lat­er, Span­ish) to go with her Russ­ian and Ger­man, and loved the coun­try and its peo­ple. What she didn’t love was the deep misog­y­ny around her, reflect­ed in proverbs:

Women are devilish.

In women’s hearts dwell serpents. 

There are no wise women.

The title of my book, No Steps Behind, was inspired by one of these proverbs, Women walk three steps behind.” As I write about Japan at the time, There was a small move­ment for women’s rights, but men still con­trolled every­thing. Fathers could sell daugh­ters to strangers… At many gath­er­ings, women had no place at the table.” While there was indeed intense eco­nom­ic stress amongst much of the rur­al pop­u­lace, fathers were not sell­ing their sons.

Beate’s sto­ry is filled with the polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal upheaval of the time in which she lived: off to Mills Col­lege at age fif­teen because a return to Europe was out the ques­tion and few women were allowed in Japan­ese uni­ver­si­ties; cut off from par­ents by Pearl Har­bor; sup­port­ing her­self through her col­le­giate expe­ri­ence as a teenage War Depart­ment radio oper­a­tor because Amer­i­ca had put near­ly all its Japan­ese speak­ers in intern­ment camps; ulti­mate­ly not know­ing if her par­ents were alive or dead in the 1945 Tokyo fire­bomb­ing. Then, on Christ­mas Eve, 1945 at age twen­ty-two, Beate returned to Japan as a cul­tur­al spe­cial­ist and inter­preter for the occu­py­ing Amer­i­can forces. She was able to find her par­ents alive, and began an assign­ment with Gen­er­al MacArthur’s team cre­at­ing a new post­war Constitution.

She draft­ed and advo­cat­ed for Arti­cles Four­teen and Twen­ty-Four, the equal rights for women claus­es — over the skep­ti­cism of her supe­ri­or offi­cers, and to the ire of the all-male Japan­ese negotiators

Con­scious of her unique chance to speak up for the Japan­ese women she knew and loved, who were not allowed to speak for them­selves, she draft­ed and advo­cat­ed for Arti­cles Four­teen and Twen­ty-Four, the equal rights for women claus­es — over the skep­ti­cism of her supe­ri­or offi­cers, and to the ire of the all-male Japan­ese nego­tia­tors. But when the out­raged par­ties were informed that the female trans­la­tor they appre­ci­at­ed so much, and who knew their coun­try so well, had authored these claus­es chal­leng­ing the sta­tus quo, they went ahead and approved them.

But wait, there’s more.

Both the Unit­ed States and Japan ren­dered the details of the nego­ti­a­tions a state secret for decades, and Beate nev­er said a word. Instead, she became a cul­tur­al pro­gram­mer for the Japan Soci­ety and Asia Soci­ety in New York City, devot­ing her pro­fes­sion­al life to forg­ing a cul­tur­al rec­on­cil­i­a­tion between two for­mer­ly bit­ter enemies.

When the sto­ry final­ly broke in the late 1980s, Beate vis­it­ed Japan. She dis­cov­ered she was a hero. She was sur­round­ed by well-wish­ers in the streets, attend­ed con­certs in her hon­or, and was bestowed a major Japan­ese gov­ern­ment award. There have been dozens of Japan­ese arti­cles, books, and plays about her. Even a movie, The Gift from BeateBeate was invit­ed on Japan­ese tele­vi­sion shows for teens, to recount her expe­ri­ences in per­fect Japanese.

From the moment I fin­ished her obit­u­ary, I knew I want­ed to tell her sto­ry for chil­dren. I also knew I was tak­ing on a lot: Con­sti­tu­tions, fem­i­nism, and a war far away from today’s kids.

Beate was a hero­ine with com­plex and over­lap­ping iden­ti­ties; her father was Russ­ian and Jew­ish, her moth­er was Aus­tri­an and Jew­ish. She was raised in Japan at a time of both ram­pant misog­y­ny and Japan­ese aggres­sion in Asia. She was not of the dom­i­nant cul­ture there, and she was state­less. She came to Amer­i­ca for school. She spoke six lan­guages. She defied easy cat­e­go­riza­tion. The chal­lenge lay in depict­ing these complexities.

It took six years, dozens of drafts, and the help of knowl­edge­able and inter­est­ed Japan­ese, Japan­ese-Amer­i­can, and Amer­i­can sen­si­tiv­i­ty read­ers, his­to­ri­ans, and trans­la­tors to get the text and tone right.

When she had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak up for Japan’s women, who were not offered a place at the table by any­one at the post­war Con­sti­tu­tion dis­cus­sions, she took it.

So who was Beate?

She was a woman who hat­ed injus­tice. When she had the oppor­tu­ni­ty to speak up for Japan’s women, who were not offered a place at the table by any­one at the post­war Con­sti­tu­tion dis­cus­sions, she took it. She was mod­est. She nev­er sought kudos for what she had done, con­sid­er­ing it mere­ly to have been her job, and hop­ing it was done well. She was delight­ful. Any­one who knew her said that. She was stead­fast. She was uncom­mon­ly adapt­able, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly and in terms of cul­tur­al identity.

She was Jew­ish at a time when that was wide­ly con­sid­ered to be a racial clas­si­fi­ca­tion, and a third of world Jew­ry was being wiped out.

Beate was well aware that equal rights for women was and is a uni­ver­sal issue, and that the Unit­ed States had (and has) its own prob­lems on that front. As I write in my book:

The only one who could speak for Japan’s women was Beate. She draft­ed a long list of changes to ensure their place at the table of the future and brought her ideas to her com­mand­ing officer.

He protest­ed. You have giv­en Japan­ese women more rights than are in the Amer­i­can Constitution!’

Beate answered calm­ly. Colonel Kades, that’s not very dif­fi­cult to do, because women are not in the Amer­i­can Constitution.’”

Once her sto­ry leaked, Beate was cel­e­brat­ed in Japan, and retained that sta­tus even after her death. Her efforts on behalf of Japan­ese women were the result of an acute cul­tur­al sen­si­tiv­i­ty that could only come from grow­ing up in the coun­try, and her close rela­tion­ships with women there. When she arrived back in Japan in late 1945, it was to the nation where she had lived twice as long as she had lived any­place else.

She sought no recog­ni­tion for what she had done; there was not one self-serv­ing aspect of her work on the Con­sti­tu­tion. She devot­ed her adult life to cross-cul­tur­al under­stand­ing of Japan and Asia.

Today, she remains an inspi­ra­tional figure.

Jeff Gottes­feld is an acclaimed writer for page, stage, and screen. His work has won awards from the Amer­i­can Library Asso­ci­a­tion, the Writ­ers Guild of Amer­i­ca, and the Nation­al Coun­cil for the Social Stud­ies. He has pre­vi­ous­ly writ­ten for adult, teen, and mid­dle-grade audi­ences; The Tree in the Court­yard is his first pic­ture book, and No Steps Behind is his second.