National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties
of National Institutes for Cultural Heritage, Japan

These spoons are made of cast sahari (an alloy of copper, tin, and lead) and hammered into their final shape. N-273 is gold-plated, the bowl of which was hemispherical, but the end half of it is lost. The handle is curved deeply, with notches engraved across the middle part in roughly one centimeter intervals, with a lotus-bud shaped end. N-274 has a simple shape with a long and narrow handle attached to an egg-shaped shallow bowl. In the Nara period, spoons were common items for temples, as the entries of spoons appear in records such as Hōryūji Shizai Chō (inventory of the Hōryūji Treasures) and Daianji Shizai Chō (inventory of the treasures of Daianji temple). Kokon-mokurokushō (Literature on Prince Regent Shotoku, also includes the records of Hōryūji temple) mentions three spoons – the large one for Buddha, the middle one is for offerings and the small one is for eating – two of which probably refer to these two pieces. Those of the same shape as N-274 have also been found in China and on the Korean Peninsula.