In the novel, Natsume portrays himself as the protagonist, Kenzoh, who is a mediocre university professor living in Tokyo with his wife and children.

The plot of Grass on the Wayside revolves around Natsume’s adoption and his subsequent relationship with his stepparents several decades after the adoption was terminated. Natsume himself was a foster child in such an adoption between the ages of two and nine, when he returned to live with his birth parents. Because such adoptions were strictly formal and upheld by the law, they had come to serve the practical needs of many people in a variety of circumstances, and they were considered a perfectly respectable social institution. It was a long-established custom in Japan at the time for parents to arrange for the adoption of one of their children by a relative, friend or acquaintance. As the Japanese raced to assimilate Western ideas and concepts of liberty, individuality and the pursuit of happiness, their collective consciousness inevitably collided with their own traditional values, such as the deeply ingrained concept of filial piety and family duty, which were hard to die. By 1903, Japan had undergone a rapid transformation from a closed feudal society to an open free market democracy built on the European model. It encompasses a short period in Natsume’s life between 19, which corresponds to the later part of Japan’s Meiji era (1868-1912).

Grass on the Wayside is an autobiographical novel written by Soseki Natsume in 1915.

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