"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. Kansuke Naka (1885-1965) was a Japanese poet, essayist, and novelist who was a student of Natsume Soseki. Hiroaki Sato lives in New York City and is a prize-winning writer and translator with over forty works of classical and modern Japanese poetry, prose, and fiction published in English"--