Guest blog – Vale Beate Gordon (with a reflection on marriage equality in Japan)

Written by Joel Rheuben (University of Tokyo)
As reported in the New York Times earlier this month (and by the Sydney Morning Herald some two weeks later), Beate Sirota Gordon sadly passed away in the final days of 2012, aged 89. While the Times’ obituary provides an adequate summary of her life’s achievements, scholars of Japanese law will likely best know of Ms Gordon as the only female civilian member in the Government Section of the postwar Occupation forces, recounted in her 1998 autobiography, “The Only Woman in the Room” (now astonishingly overpriced on Amazon: see her verbal summary on YouTube instead).

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