Japan adopts postwar constitution

November 3, 1946

Under American occupation, Japan adopted a new constitution drafted largely by MacArthur's staff, including a young woman named Beate Sirota Gordon who wrote the equal rights provisions. It stripped the emperor of divinity, guaranteed rights to women, and in Article 9 renounced war forever as a sovereign right. The constitution still stands, unamended, almost eighty years later. A new Japan had been written.