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Political Theory (Structural Injustice, Historical Injustice)

Grounded in the field of political theory, I aim to become a researcher who can broaden her thinking beyond established frameworks through interdisciplinary engagement. In my work, I begin with real-world political issues concerning injustice and oppression, continually exploring how the gap between theory and practice can be bridged. I place particular emphasis on being sensitive to marginalised voices, while reflecting on my own positionality as a researcher who is situated in both privileged and non-privileged social positions, and seeking ways to navigate it responsibly.

With regard to historical issues and reconciliation in East Asia, my personal background as someone of both Japanese and Chinese heritage informs my perspective, leading me to approach these matters not merely as theoretical subjects, but as deeply personal and political questions. In the future, I hope to engage as a political theorist on the international stage, re-examining debates over East Asian historical issues and reconciliation from a normative perspective.

The question surrounding the nature of responsibility that contemporary agents bear in relation to the past wrongdoings, and how such responsibility should be executed, has been one of the important normative questions in recent debates in political theory. Especially in particular cases of historical injustice, such as the case of the injustice of comfort women system – referring to the state-led exploitation of women for sexual labour by the Japanese Empire during WWII – the political division among actors amid the complexity of the injustice itself, has introduced additional layers of normative difficulty to the question of responsibility and amelioration. The problem lies not only in the enduring nature of the past harm but also in the ongoing conflict and division, particularly in the context of contested historical memory and discourse, clashes over value-based disagreements, and emotional responses to the past injustices of war and colonialism alongside the dynamics of realpolitik that shape it.

My research will start off its normative investigation with the following overarching question: What kinds of responsibility do contemporary actors bear in relation to historical-structural injustice, and how should these responsibilities be navigated amid ongoing social division and conflict? In response to this inquiry, I will first begin by re-examining the existing theories of structural justice and responsibility in approaching historical cases of injustice. While previous structural approaches emphasise the contemporary moral significance of historical injustices by incorporating the concept of structural injustice that focuses on the trans-temporal endurance of the wrongs and harms. In this study, I address the shortcomings of the approach in dealing with these injustices in contexts where democratic institutions are absent, or, in worse cases, under conditions of social division and conflict. I contend that the prevailing framework of structural responsibility theory has taken for granted the theoretical presumption of a pre-existing democratic society, or at least a formal or informal democratic institution. This assumption appears unrealistic, given that such institutions are largely absent in many non-Western political contexts and in the global arena. In response, I will introduce a novel notion of political responsibility called preliminary responsibility, which prescribes a ‘responsibility for fulfilling the precondition for undertaking structural responsibility.’ Particularly, I argue that, in those cases that lack sufficient democratic institutions for undertaking structural justice, the act of forum-building – or, in several cases of social division and conflict, the act of reconciliation – serves as a preliminary responsibility for structural injustice.