The issue of “comfort women” of Japanese Imperial troops invited us to rethink of how to repair the past war-crime and how to respond to survivors’ claims to seek justice. The article by Yayo Okano argues that the ethics of care and care theories have at least three advantages to answer the questions because it focuses responsively on structural violence, proposes a new idea of relational selves, and takes the social connection model to justice.

Read Yayo Okano’s article here

Abstract: Since Carol Gilligan published her masterpiece, In a Different Voice, many scholars, especially feminist scholars in various fields, including moral theory, philosophy, and political and legal theory, have been inspired to establish a more inclusive approach to social injustice as well as sexual inequality. The purpose of this article is to explore the depth and expanse of the ethics of care for its potential as a political philosophy. To pursue this end, the article analyzes first the main claims of care ethics by responding to its typical counterarguments, which criticize the ethics of care as being too dependent on gender differences, particularism, and essentialism. The second section examines three challenges that care ethics poses to the male-oriented mainstream of political philosophy, especially the theory of justice. The ethics of care provides us with a new approach to moral and political issues because it focuses responsively on social injustice,  proposes a new idea of relational self and takes the social connection model to justice. With these three perspectives proposed by the ethics of care in mind, the article turns its eyes to global implications of care ethics by referring to the issue of the “comfort women” of Japanese troops during the Second World War.