No Steps Behind: Beate Sirota Gordon's Battle for Women's Rights in Japan

I'm Mengyu and I work in a pre-school room with 3 year-olds. (I also have teaching experience with 5 year-olds.) The book No Steps Behind talks about a story where Beate Sirota went to Japan with her family in 1929. Beate was talented in learning foreign languages and she became fluent in Japanese. She fell in love with her new home quickly and made a best friend Akara. Beate noticed in Japan women did not have equal rights like men, for example, women had to walk three steps behind men. The world became more hateful as she grew and Beate had to go to the United States for college. Beate’s communication with her family was cut off by war, but eventually she got a job in the US army thanks to her perfect Japanese which brought her back to Japan. At age 22 Beate was asked to help write the constitution for Japan and she fought to give women equal rights. Her contribution to women’s rights is so great that people called her "Beate-san" when she returned to Japan many years later. (I might be wrong about the importance of this suffix. It just caught my eye when it appeared twice and I googled it. In Japanese business life, “san” is an honorific suffix meaning “honorable Mr/Mrs”.)  

I enjoyed reading No Steps Behind. The book used plenty of visuals to help students understand how does life in Japan look like as well as the written form of Japanese language. I very much loved reading the author's note which answered some questions I had when I was reading it. I would recommend this book for kids ages 5 and older since the book has long passages of words and is more fact-based than a story-telling book. It has several lines of written Japanese in parallel with pronunciation and English translation. A book of relevant background would be very helpful for students to understand the international relationship during WWII. When I read the book it raised a doubt about why it was the Americans who were writing the constitution for Japan? If I were to use this book with my 3 year-olds, I probably would use a shortened version to tell the story and utilize more of its visuals with this age group. For example, it would be important for kids to know what do Japanese people wear; how do they entertain themselves; how does an open market look like in Japan; and especially what language do they speak and kanji writing. (I did try to read this book with my 3 year-olds and I was only able to keep their attention for 3 minutes.) This book can also be used during “women in history” month as Beate Sirota did change women’s social rights and status in Japan and her advocation and contribution are fundamental.