In 1942, not long after the attack on Pearl Harbor, a group of Japanese philosophers got together in Kyoto to discuss Japan's role in the world. The project of this ultra-nationalist gathering was, as they put it, to find a way to "overcome modern civilization." Since modern civilization was another term for Western civilization, the conference might just as well have been entitled "Overcoming the West." In a complete reversal of the late-nineteenth-century goal of "leaving Asia and joining the West," Japan was now fighting a "holy war" to liberate Asia from the West and purify Asian minds of Western ideas. Part of the holy war was, as it were, an exercise in philosophical cleansing.

The cleansing agent was a mystical mishmash of German-inspired ethnic nationalism and Zen- and Shinto-based nativism. The Japanese were a "world-historical race" descended from the gods, whose divine task it was to lead all Asians into a new age of Great Harmony, and so on. But what was "the West" which had to be purged? What needed to be "overcome"? The question has gained currency, since the chief characteristics of this Western enemy would have sounded familiar to Osama bin Laden, and other Islamic extremists. They are, not in any particular order, materialism, liberalism, capitalism, individualism, humanism, rationalism, socialism, decadence, and moral laxity. These ills would be overcome by a show of Japanese force, not just military force, but force of will, of spirit, of soul. The key characteristics of the Japanese or "Asian" spirit were self-sacrifice, discipline, austerity, individual submission to the collective good, worship of divine leadership, and a deep faith in the superiority of instinct over reason.
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This is a very interesting piece. Then the following paragraph caught my eye.

Few modern societies were as dominated by males as wartime Japan, and the brutal policy of forcing Korean, Chinese, and Filipina, as well as Japanese, girls to serve in military brothels was a sign of the low status of women in the Japanese empire. And yet, the war itself had the peculiar effect of emancipating Japanese women to a degree that cannot possibly have been intended. Because most able-bodied men were needed on the battlefronts, women had to take care of their families, trade in the black markets, and work in the factories. Unlike the men, who experienced defeat as a deep humiliation, many Japanese women regarded the Allied victory as a step toward their liberation. One of the most important changes in postwar Japan was that women got the right to vote. They did so in large numbers as early as 1946. A new constitution was drawn up mostly by American jurists, but the articles concerning women's rights were largely the work of a remarkable person called Beate Sirota, who represented most things enemies of the West would have loathed. She was European, educated, a woman, and a Jew.

My dad was in the Air Force and we were stationed in Japan from 1957 to 1961. I was 12 when we went over. This has resulted in a life long interest in Japan. So, when I see something like the reference to Beate Sirota, I like to investigate. It was off to Google. Google knows all.

Her story is in the links below. Born in Vienna, grew up in Japan, and went to Mills College in California.

Beate Sirota Gordon

One of only sixty Caucasians in the U.S. who spoke Japanese, fluent in six languages, and able to see Japan from a variety of perspectives, Gordon had no problem returning to Japan after the war. On Christmas Eve, 1945 Sirota became the first American civilian to enter post-war Japan. She found her parents suffering from malnutrition and from the freezing cold under village arrest in Karuizawa, a mountain resort. Moving to Tokyo. Sirota quickly landed a job on General MacArthur's staff.

Fearing that other allied powers would foist an inferior constitution on post-war Japan, on February 4, 1946, MacArthur ordered the Government Section, where Gordon worked, to draft a new constitution for Japan in seven days. Since no one on the staff had ever written a constitution before, Gordon began her task by scouring war-torn Tokyo for all national constitutions she could find to use as guidelines for their work. The ten constitutions which Gordon located helped the young American staff to succeed beyond all of their hopes by writing an entirely new constitution that has governed Japanese affairs ever since without the change of a comma.
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Gordon had written the women's rights articles as explicitly as possible so that the constitutional intent could not be eviscerated by old, male Japanese bureaucrats, when they would prepare the new Civil Code at a later time. Also, she knew that American women had been disadvantaged because the US Constitution failed to specifically guarantee women's rights. Two articles on women's rights did survive. Written by Gordon, then only 22 years of age, they read:

Article 14. All of the people are equal under the law and there shall be no discrimination in political, economic or social relations because of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin.

Article 24. Marriage shall be based only on the mutual consent of the both sexes and it shall be maintained through mutual cooperation with equal rights of husband and wife as a basis. With regard to choice of spouse, property rights, inheritance, choice of domicile, divorce and other matters pertaining to marriage and the family, laws shall be enacted from the standpoint of individual dignity and the essential equalities of the sexes. . . .
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Beate's participation in the writing of the Japanese constitution was kept secret for many years and her story has come to light only recently.

An interview with Beate:
Life Outside Academe