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 190...