DATE November selection

Suspend your ideas about what makes a novel.

Heredity of Taste by Natsume Soseki is mythology and the personal musings of its narrator, which easily feels like the author's unadorned voice.

Soseki’s first and only anti-war novel opens with the mythological grandeur of a Wagnerian opera, then immediately recounts the human cost and aftermath of soldier Kosan’s death in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, narrated by Kosan’s unnamed friend.

Heredity of Taste is split into two parts. After a prologue of gods meddling into earthly affairs, Soseki presents an elegiac rumination on Kosan’s death and the victorious homecoming of his fellow soldiers at the central train station in Tokyo juxtaposed against the might-have-beens of Kosan’s life and an unknown young beauty encountered grieving at his grave.

The second section offers a somewhat hard-to-follow but fascinating dip into historical Japanese social hierarchy, western psychology, karma, ancestors and a dash of a detective-mystery story as the narrator tries to uncover the young woman’s identity.

One key to understanding Heredity is to substitute “attraction” for ‘taste” in its title. Another aid to understanding Heredity is the excellent introduction in the Tuttle Classics edition written by Stephen W. Kohl, Associate Professor at the University of Oregon. Kohl provides both historical and author context for Heredity’s setting and themes.

A fuller analytical discussion of Heredity of Taste can be found here.

Natsume Soseki is the pen name of Natsume Kinnosuke. Soseki, Japan’s Charles Dickens, is considered the foremost novelist of the Meiji period, which lasted from 1868 to 1912. He was pictured on the Japanese ¥1000 note from1984 to 2004.

Soseki’s most famous works Kokoro and Botchan are available online full-text and in English. Many of his works dealt with individual or personal desires versus group responsibilities and ties.

Although written in 1906, Heredity of Taste has a modern experimental feel. It proffers a microcosm of Japanese national character and gives a glimpse of a country on the cusp of melding the past with the future.