Heredity of Taste

Written in eight days, in December 1905, and published in the January 1906 issue of the magazine Teikoku Bungaku (Imperial Literature), Shumi no iden ( The Heredity of Taste ) is Soseki Natsume's only anti-war work. Chronicling the mourning process of a narrator haunted by his friend's death, the story reveals Soseki's attitude to the atrocity of war, specifically to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, and to the personal tragedies and loss of individuality of young men like his hero Ko-san, and t