The Heredity of Taste (趣味の遺傳, Shumi no Iden) is a novella by Japanese writer Natsume Sōseki.
The novella first recounts the narrator's arrival at a train station where Japanese soldiers are returning from the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5.
The narrator sees a soldier who bear a striking resemblance to a late friend Kō-san, an infantry lieutenant who was killed in a trench during that war.
After investigations, the narrator proffers his own theory on the heredity of taste – the woman and Kō-san find each other attractive owing to a bond which had previously existed between their ancestors decades ago.
The first is a 1974 translation by Akito Itō and Graeme Wilson, which also offers two other early works by Sōseki, Ten Nights of Dream and Hearing Things.