 1,000 listen to Mrs. Gordon On October 29, about 1,000 people participated in a rally in Tokyo calling for the Japanese Constitution to be fully implemented. The participants listened to a lecture by Beate Sirota Gordon, who was a staff member of the General Headquarters of the Allied Forces in Japan (GHQ) that drafted the Japanese Constitution. Coming to Tokyo at age five and living there until she was 15, Gordon had a chance to carefully examine the lives of Japanese women who did not have any rights at that time. She came back to Japan as a GHQ staff member to take part in the work on the Constitution. She wrote the women's rights article, which now remains as Article 24 of the Constitution. Gordon said that the Japanese Constitution has not been amended for 57 years because it is a good constitution. She added that other countries should learn from the war-renouncing Article 9 and copy it for their constitutions. (end) |