Beate Sirota Gordon (/beɪˈɑːteɪ/; October 25, 1923 – December 30, 2012) was an Austrian and American performing arts presenter and women's rights advocate.

Sirota Gordon returned to Japan after the end of the war, assigned as translator to Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.

[6][5] Beate Sirota lived in Tokyo a total of ten years before she moved to Oakland, California, in 1939 to attend Mills College, where she was inducted into Phi Beta Kappa society, and graduated in 1943 with a bachelor's degree in modern languages.

Assigned to the Political Affairs staff, she worked for Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) Douglas MacArthur's occupation army as a translator.

[9] Sirota, as interpreter on MacArthur's staff, was the only woman present during the negotiations between the Japanese Steering Committee and the American team.

[10] After returning to the United States with her parents,[6] in 1948,[1] Beate Sirota married Lieutenant Joseph Gordon, who had been chief of the interpreter–translator team for the military intelligence section at the Allied Supreme Commander GHQ and was also present for the negotiations on the constitution.

Gordon was also a consultant and adviser to producers such as Harold Prince for his production of the Stephen Sondheim musical, Pacific Overtures.

Gordon's travels in search of authentic performing arts from Asia took her to such remote areas as Purulia in West Bengal, India, and Kuching in Sarawak, Malaysia, where she sought out indigenous performing artists to bring to universities, museums, and other cultural venues in New York and across the United States and Canada.

They also intensified the post-World War II Asian influence on American art, design, music, literature, and theater.

[6] For the media, Gordon produced and hosted a series of 12 half-hour programs on the Japanese arts broadcast on New York's Channel 13 and served as commentator for a series of four hour-long programs featuring traditional and popular music from Japan, China, India, and Thailand which were broadcast on Channel 31, New York City's municipal television station.

Gordon retired from the directorship at the Asia Society in 1991, continuing as Senior Consultant for Performing Arts until July 1993.

A play based on Gordon's role in writing the Japanese constitution, A String of Pearls by James Miki, was performed by the Seinen Gekijo in Tokyo, in April 1998.

The film The Sirota Family and the 20th Century, produced by Tomoko Fujiwara, made its debut in the West in Paris in April 2009.

[11] Jeff Gottesfeld published a 2020 book for children, celebrating Gordon's activism and documenting the historical struggle for equal rights.

[14] In a statistical overview derived from writings by and about Gordon, OCLC/WorldCat encompasses roughly 150+ works in 150+ publications in 4 languages and 1,000+ library holdings.