In October 2015, after I completed my presentation on “Japan’s Gratitude for America” at a local church, a lady came up to me and asked if I had read a book called, “The Only Woman in the Room” by Beate Sirota Gordon. I had not.
I was intrigued and had to read it right away. Her background and the fact that she grew up in Japan – as a foreigner, no less, during the 1930s – was of great interest to me. Only under a very unique circumstance, would it have been allowed in a very closed society that was – and still is, to a large extent – Japan. Of course, the book explains how that was made possible. The descriptions of Japan before and immediately after World War II – BEFORE I was born – were simply fascinating as well.
Ms. Gordon’s book, originally published in 1997, opened my eyes and gave me a glimpse into how the seeds for my freedom were planted through the Japanese Constitution, on which the author had a significant impact. She was given a unique opportunity to make sure that women’s rights were included in the Japanese Constitution.
Having grown up within Japan’s educational system, one of the items that has stayed in my head clearly and unequivocally about the country’s Constitution all these years was that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”
I did not remember learning in school about women’s rights, however. In retrospect, it is possible that the Ministry of Education, which was then still quite likely to have been made up only of men, chose to downplay that part of the Constitution as part of the school curriculum.
To most Japanese back then, regardless of gender, renouncing war was probably far more important than anything else. They were simply sick and tired of the misery brought about by the prolonged war. It is highly unlikely that most Japanese knew – or even if they did, they would have had a difficult time accepting – how the country had initiated brutal attacks on the rest of Asia as well as on Pearl Harbor. Having surrendered to the Allied Powers, such renunciation of war was a logical consequence for Japan at the time.
Fast forward to today, seven decades later. Times change. The makeup of people around the world change. None of us fully understands others, their cultural backgrounds, and their actions.
In principle, I am a proponent of Japan’s Peace Constitution. By the same token, I believe each sovereign nation must have a strong military, capable of crushing the enemy swiftly in case of an unprovoked attack on its soil. I say this because peaceful co-existence is possible only in a perfect world where everyone respects one another and is committed to peace. The reality of human history tells us, however, that self-defense with weaponry is a necessary evil of our existence. Enough said. This is a whole different topic for another day.
Today, I need to write about how my freedom – and freedom for my generation of people, and especially women in Japan – was secured after WWII. I knew my parents were deeply grateful to World War II veterans of the Allied Powers, especially those Americans who helped rebuild Japan after the war. Until recently, however, I did not know enough about the specifics as to how certain events took place to make my parents’ generation of Japanese so grateful to the United States of America.
Not unlike many Muslim women in the Middle East and elsewhere around the world today, before WWII ended, women in Japan were considered “little better than chattel to be bought and sold,” writes the author. I can relate to every word of her statement as someone who witnessed how my father had treated my mother. And the Japanese language structure “naturally” puts men above women. This is precisely the reason why I never wanted to teach Japanese to my American-born children. I had zero interest in teaching them the social hierarchy through the language from the old world, from which I had escaped.
The “new” Constitution, which Ms. Gordon had helped write under the directive of General Douglas MacArthur, made sure that the status of women was brought up to be equal to that of men. If you knew the Japanese society back then, this was nothing short of revolutionary.
Ms. Gordon explained, “the model for my draft text on women’s rights was the 1919 Weimar Constitution, a progressive document that saw marriage as based on the equal rights of both sexes.” She continued, “It was the duty of the state to promote social welfare policies supportive of families, and motherhood was guaranteed government support. As a woman, I felt that my participation in the drafting of the new Japanese Constitution would be meaningless if I could not get women’s equality articulated and guaranteed with similar precision.”
Ms. Gordon continued, “To this day, I believe that the Americans responsible for the final version of the draft of the new constitution inflicted a great loss on Japanese women.”
Seeing how the status of most women in Japan is still several decades behind that of American women, I would have to agree with her assessment. That said, I respectfully disagree with Ms. Gordon’s assertion that it is the government’s responsibility to support motherhood – although I sincerely appreciate the fact that the environment which she had witnessed was the reason for her conclusion.
The old cultural tradition dies hard, even in the face of the new Constitution which was developed by the Allied Forces. And, unfortunately, for my mother, the new Constitution did not help her at all with her life – although it should have. After reading Ms. Gordon’s book, I was convinced that my mother must have actually read the Constitution and took it to heart – not for herself but for me, her only daughter. Why do I say this? Well, she made sure to instill in me the confidence that I always seemed to have – that I could do anything I chose to do in life. It is highly unlikely that any Japanese mother, prior to the implementation of the “new” Constitution, would have had the courage to do what she did – for me. The realization of this fact about how my mother had raised me – despite everything else that she had to endure in her relationship with my father – brought me to tears.
As I welcome another new year, I remain deeply grateful, more than words could ever express, for General MacArthur, American WWII veterans, Ms. Gordon, and my mother, especially, for the way she brought me up. The freedom I have been able to enjoy since reaching adulthood in post-WWII Japan would not have been possible without their visions and actions to make a better world possible for the future generations of humanity.
