Winner of the 2017 - 2018 Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission Translation Prize Japan's most beloved memoir from the early twentieth century, "an extraordinarily beautiful evocation of the world of childhood." Perhaps the most admired childhood memoir ever written in Japan, The Silver Spoon is a sharp detailing of life at the end of the Meiji period (1912) through the eyes of a boy as he grows into adolescence. Innocence fades as he slowly becomes aware of himself and others, while scene after scene richly evokes the tastes, lifestyles, landscapes, objects, and manners of a lost Japan.