Proposed by Chinese scholar Nie Zhenzhao in 2004, ethical literary criticism has rapidly developed into a theory of literary criticism that has been recognised and widely used by Chinese and international academics. In order to further promote the dissemination and development of ethical literary criticism in East Asia, the author was invited to organise this column, focusing on the key concepts of ethical literary criticism such as ethical identity, ethical choice, and ethical environment, and exploring how ethical literary criticism provides theoretical support for the study of literature in East Asia, including Japan and South Korea, from the perspectives of theoretical construction and critical practice. The paper also reviews the process of the author’s study of ethical literary criticism since 2017, and re-examines the connection between ethical literary criticism and Japanese literary studies, with the hope of creating a new space for dialogue between the two. In Japan, there is a new trend of analysing literary works from an ethical perspective through the use of concepts such as “negative capability” and the ethics of care. In order to explore the relationship between ethical literary criticism and the above concepts, the author examines Kobo Abe’s novel The Face of Another as an example of a textual study.

Waves of the Peninsula, an award-winning novel serialized in Japanese in the Keijo Daily News, struck a deep chord with the Japanese in Korea. It was adapted into a play by the Mitsubo Association (ミツボ會) theater company and performed in Keijo (Seoul) Theater in May 1923. It was also adapted by Nakanishi Inosuke (中西伊之助) into a movie script in 1935. Furthermore, compared to other Japanese novels based on a Japanese-Korean romance, this novel stands out for its ethical awareness. Even though the novel’s Japanese author, Baba Akira, must have felt pressured or conflicted about describing Japanese prejudice against Koreans or Korea’s voluntary enlightenment movements, he observed the colonial situation from an ethical point of view, beyond a view of the rulers vs. the ruled. In particular, given that the novel shows an awareness of the Korean people’s development of culture and education by describing the specific circumstances of Korean intellectuals without deviating from the purpose of a literary contest, this novel has some features that go beyond those of a typical popular novel or a typical political novel reflecting the intentions of the Government General.

This article considers Gengetsu’s Kagenosumika in view of violence and ethics. This novel illuminates the dehumanization and violence resulting from the ills of capitalism, while at the same time noting the historical and ethnic issues of Korean residents in Japan. In this study, we have defined two axes of this work to develop the discussion. One axis concerns the ethnic and historical issues of Korean residents in Japan and individuals, whilst the other axis involves the ills of capitalism and the violence in the enclave. The perceived universal ethical issues and ethnic contradiction of Korean residents in Japan are the key-words penetrating the literary world of Gengetsu.

All along, academics have emphasized the skillfulness of Ryunosuke Akutagawa’s literature and its aesthetics, completely opposing Akutagawa’s literature to naturalistic literature and ignoring the immanent interrelationship between the two. However, by organizing the data on the expressions of naturalistic literature in Akutagawa’s literature, it is possible to find that his attitude toward Japanese naturalistic literature changed from sensual criticism to rational criticism, and to critical recognition. His pursuit of the combination of “truth, goodness, and beauty” is also based on an increasingly objective and in-depth understanding and criticism of naturalistic literature. He criticized naturalistic literature for taking pride in its shamefulness, and praised emerging literature for placing greater emphasis on the ethical and moral nature of its works. This is also reflected in his admiration for some of the naturalist writers, like Doppo Kunikida and Hakuchou Masamune, and his emphasis on their humanistic and ethical approach to writing. Taking Japanese naturalism as a reference object, the overall direction of Akutagawa’s literature can be examined from its founding roots, and its creative philosophy—which criticizes naturalistic literature that flouts ethics and morals and emphasizes the function of literature—can be clarified.

As an active promoter of adult education, Raymond Williams has attracted academic attention recently for his contribution to British adult education. However, few scholarly discussions have examined his emphasis on literary education in the realm of adult education and its ethical significance in constructing a working-class ethical identity. Williams discerned a misrepresentation of working-class identity, either as a mere “machine” of the labour force or as a passive consumer of culture devoid of rational will, akin to an animal. This erroneous construction is closely tied to the neglect of literary education in working-class education following industrialization. The profession-oriented education failed to incorporate literary enlightenment, depriving workers of their entitlement to ethical insights from literature. The adult literary education spearheaded by Cambridge elites didn’t solve the problem, identifying the working class as a mass devoid of rationality for literary criticism or creation, relegated to a status subordinate to animalistic instincts. Williams, in his endeavour to destigmatize the working class from the “mob” and distinguish popular culture from industrial civilization, attempted to reconstruct a working-class ethical identity characterized by rationality, creativity, and initiative. To achieve this goal, Williams envisioned an adult literary education focusing on the practical skill of criticism and remaining open to popular culture across various media. Through these ways, Williams emphasized the intellectual and aesthetic potential inherent in the working class, and advocated for their active involvement in the creation of a dynamic and inclusive common culture, one not only shared but co-constructed by all.

Education has a direct correlation with the advancement of racial equality, gender equality, class equality, and moral development among individuals of African descent. It consistently emerges as a prominent theme in the lives, thoughts, and protests of African Americans. Ernest Gaines, a contemporary African American writer, dedicated his efforts to depicting African American heroes. His notable work, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman, explores the ethical predicament surrounding education in the South, the ethical choices made by African American heroes, and the impact of heroism on African American education. Gaines’ portrayal of heroism within the educational struggles faced by African Americans unveils its profound influence in liberating their minds and addressing the internal and external challenges of their education.

Ian McEwan’s science fiction Machines Like Me virtually constructs the post-ethical selection era of coexistence of humans and machines in a parallel universe, offering a forward-looking reflection on the ethical issues faced during this stage. This article delves into the family ethics and human-machine relationships of the post-ethical selection era by examining the dislocation of ethical identity, the conflicts of ethical choices, and the underlying differences in the ethical wisdom of human-machine relationships among the protagonist Miranda, Charlie, and the AI humanoid robot Adam. The paper holds that the death of Adam not only foreshadows the rupture of a new family model, but also reflects the conflicts between ethics and law, machine and human power in the human-machine coexistence society. This novel subtly conveys McEwan’s ethical wisdom and concerns for the future of human beings, suggesting that the conflicts of ethical values between humans and machines may lead to alienation in human-machine and human society.

The purpose of this study is to examine how Voltaire uses Confucian principles in The Orphan of China to scrutinize the tension between morality and social order during the French Enlightenment. In his adaptation of The Orphan of Zhao, Voltaire utilizes Confucian ethics to deconstruct binary oppositions such as good versus evil, emotion versus reason, absolutism versus altruism, and tragedy versus comedy, resulting in his concept of enlightened absolutism. In characterizing “Genghis Khan,” this play demonstrates the role of morality in guiding a monarch to foster cultural, artistic, and political-philosophical innovation. Set within the framework of ethical literary criticism, this paper analyzes Voltaire’s interpretation of Confucian culture and his pragmatic approach to political enlightenment. It reveals the ethical perspectives embedded in cross-cultural narratives and their impacts on social transformation.

In recounting the infant’s demise, Fenton not only reconstructs the ethical dilemma of Cheng Ying’s “son-sacrificing” by introducing the role of the mother, but also employs the stylistic form of poetry to have Cheng Ying’s son articulate his own death, criticizing the feudal patriarchy through the latter’s emotional process. Regarding Tu Angu’s death, Fenton creates two trajectories: “fatherly love” and “tyranny.” His description of tyranny is a signifier of his “brain text” in the mode of dramatic conflict with “destruction” as subject, and the orphan’s “patricide” symbolizes Fenton’s liquidation of tyranny by literary imagination and manipulation. Fenton’s subversive rewriting of Cheng Ying’s death is based on his deep understanding of the meaning of life. The infant’s transformation into a spectre represents Fenton’s advocacy for humans’ right to life, extending his reflection on the relationship between life and humanity. By reshaping the fate of Cheng Ying, Fenton re-establishes and proclaims the spiritual boundaries between the individual and the collective within the central historical narrative of “going through fire and water.”

Literary creation, literary text, and literary reception are different stages of brain text transformation. Creation is the transformation of brain text into written text, and it is also the process by which writers present their individual ideas in a material medium and transform them into public concepts. Reception is the process by which readers extract the brain text from the written text, and the meanings from the public sphere flow back into the individual ideas. The transformation of brain text into written text and then into brain text is not an unchanged transmission of meaning, but an eventful process in which meaning is added, deleted, revised, and reshaped. Writers’ transformation of brain text is affected by unconsciousness, language rules, and other elements, and readers also face the competition and game of meaning when they get brain text from literary works. The transformation of brain text is a fluctuating ethical event that is constantly rewritten and translated, and influenced by the ethical choices of writers and readers, brain text is selected, transformed, and re-generated in writers’ creation and readers’ reception. Not only do brain texts contain ethical concepts, but the transformation of brain texts is an event with ethical implications in itself.

Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is a postcolonial fiction, with the magical protagonist Saleem Sinai as the narrator, presenting Indian history before and after Independence from personal experience. From the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism, this paper tries to analyze the combination of Saleem’s brain concepts, and further discusses how Saleem presents his construction of identity and rewriting of Indian history in his brain text, as well as how he conveys a new perspective on history. Saleem integrates his personal experience with Indian history through conceptual blending, narrating a grand historical narrative of the Indian-Pakistani conflict on the basis of self-introspection of history in New Historicist approaches to deconstruct the official historical narrative. This paper, in terms of brain concepts and brain texts, summarizes Saleem’s multicultural identity and the characteristics of his historical writing, reflecting people’s ethical choice and thinking during the transitional period of India and in the multicultural context, extolling the dedication that combines individual and national destiny.

In Edgar Huntley, the protagonist Edgar, a white man who suffers from somnambulism due to the guilt of killing his “brother,” maintains the ethical order within the white community by transferring the blame to the Indians. Edgar accuses the Irish immigrant first and then the Indians as the murderer. The ethical choice behind two shifts of transferring crime reflects the white supremacist racial ethic that it makes sense to kill Indians because they brutalize the whites. Taking Edgar’s massacre of Indians for revenge as the surface narrative, the novel conceals Brown’s Anglo-Saxon ultra-nationalist ethical values in constructing the white (Anglo-Saxon centered) empire, that is, to transform the internal contradictions of the white community into racial and cultural conflicts with the Indians, and to eradicate the political, economic, and cultural threats from colored people by violence.

American Jewish writer Saul Bellow’s The Bellarosa Connection tells the Holocaust survivors’ experiences from the perspective of an unnamed narrator, “I,” who has never experienced the Holocaust, presenting Bellow’s reflections on the transmission of Holocaust memory as an issue of ethics of memory. The narrator’s national identity crisis due to the failure of ethics of memory is mainly presented through unreliable narration. The narrator’s shift from unreliable to reliable narrative reflects his awareness of his own ethical dilemma and his ethical choice, representing the reconstruction of national identity through the return of the ethics of memory. Besides, the implied author’s voice in the narrator’s reliable narration represents the ethical choice of Bellow himself as a second-generation American Jewish writer on the important issue of Holocaust writing, and to some extent sets the direction for American Jewish literature.

The spirit of Chinese culture is rooted in the Confucian tradition, which takes ethics as its foundation. The traditional poetic propositions of “Poetry Expresses Aspirations” and “Poetry from Emotions” are themselves colored by “ethical choices.” From the perspective of literary ethics criticism, the “Poetry of Spectating Performances” demonstrates the ethical conflict between the natural emotion of indulgence and the moral emotion of abstinence and cultivation of one’s moral character in the Tang Dynasty. Analyzing the conflict between the poet’s lust and reason in the creation of “Poems for the Observation of Kabuki” is of great significance in interpreting the inner ethical order and social morality of the Tang literati, and also provides useful clues for understanding the social landscape of the Tang Dynasty.

In video games, identification of the reader (gamer) with his or her avatar redefines the relationship among three ethical identities: the critic, the mourner, and the mourned. The theoretical foundation for ethical criticism of mourning established by Sigmund Freud and Jacques Derrida has changed accordingly. Compared with the ethical dilemma in traditional literature of mourning, video games’ narrative mechanics have established new ethical views of mourning that respect both the self and the other. Immersive narrative contrives the presence of both the mourner and the mourned—which Derrida deemed impossible—paying respect to the lost other through the logic of compensatory mourning. Multi-run storytelling reconciles Freud’s contradictory views on death through fluid identities of mourning, teaching moral lessons on the reverence for life and the pursuit of truth about loss. Non-linear narrative encourages gamers to misread the text of mourning, and its emphasis on the subject’s interests corrects the altruistic tradition of melancholic mourning.

Written in a screenplay format, Interior Chinatown draws a spotlight on the life dilemma and performance experiences of an Asian American supporting role, Willis Wu, who aspires to become a Kung Fu Guy inside Chinatown. The novel also focuses on the life stories of different actors. When the Asian actor community is not acknowledged by the American mainstream society, they choose different forms of identity performances to explore, struggling to balance between family and career, as well as American identity and Asian identity, yet invariably all lead to failure, whether it is integration or disengagement. Through the examples of different characters’ failures, the author re-examines the possible ways for Asian Americans to gain a foothold in society. However, there are no clear answers.

In Oresteia, Aeschylus skillfully integrates contemporary issues of the ancient Greek polis, especially the marginalization of women in public life during the 5th century BC, into the narrative of the House of Atreus. Aeschylus, within the preliminary two parts of the trilogy, artfully constructs a tableau of ethical quandaries confronting various familial identities—father, mother, son, and daughter—thereby illustrating the gender antagonisms spurred by acts of familial homicide. It is only in the concluding play, Eumenides, that the cycle of personal justice driven by retribution is brought to a close through the medium of a judicial verdict by rational will, thereby indirectly mirroring the gestation and perpetuation of a sustained bias and hostility towards women, namely misogyny, within a system where men increasingly dominate public life and women are marginalized to subordinate positions.

In short story collection Shiloh and Other Stories, contemporary American novelist Bobbie Ann Mason attempts to explore the close connection between the contemporary marital crisis and the ideological movement of the 1960s through the portrayal of marital life in the rural South of the United States. Taking the key stories “Shiloh” and “The Retreat,” this paper will argue that the root cause of the conflict between husband and wife does not arise from the difference of lifestyle, but the conflict of marital concepts, that is, the conflict between the contemporary concept of marriage based on love and the traditional marital ethics based on responsibility from the perspective of Ethical Literary Criticism. To some extent, the counterculture and feminist movements have deconstructed the traditional marital ethics in the United States, but are insufficient and one-sided in constructing a new type of marriage ethics.