There is a mushroom growing in the forests from Northern British Columbia to Northern California. This mushroom is considered a delicacy in Japan. But to the rest of the world, it is only another mushroom.
Writer Anna Tsing takes us on a journey of the matusake mushroom.
This mushroom grows under the ground. Not only does it take a picker’s eye to spot the slight ground disturbance to find it, harvesting takes physical stamina and forest knowledge.
Pickers spend their day combing the forests. Some days, the harvest is great; other days not. By suppertime, they bring their finds to the “temporary tent cities” where buyers gather. That’s when the haggling starts between pickers and buyers.
There’s pressure on both sides. Mushrooms deteriorate fast: the pickers must sell their delicate mushrooms before the buyers leave, around 10:00 p.m. The buyers have a quota to fill, at the lowest price possible. Pickers competing against other pickers; buyers competing against other buyers. Almost no laws; no lawyers or courts. This is free enterprise at its best. Supply and demand.
When the buyers fill their quota, they take their mushrooms to their “field agent.” He has been making deals with the “bulk agent,” who has been making deals with buyers in Japan. The bulk agent puts the mushrooms on airplanes bound for Japan the next morning.
The supply chain on the Japanese side is just as interesting. But I’ll let you read the book.
And this book goes into all sorts of rabbit trails. From chapter to chapter, the author has vignettes about biology, ecology, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, commerce, and governance. Each chapter is a new intellectual adventure all centered around the matusake mushroom. This book is a “chicken soup for the soul” for how the world works. Along the way, we learn something about a mushroom.
The matusake mushroom thrives in an artificial ecosystem. The mushroom only proliferated when Japanese peasants of a few centuries ago cultivated their forests in a certain way. The mushroom found the new ecosystem conducive to propagate the species. And it became a popular staple in the Japanese diet.
Post WW2 Japanese industrialization wrecked that ecosystem. It’s now hard to find that mushroom in Japan. But somehow matusake spores found their way to the forests of western North America, which had, by then, been changed enough — by human logging practices — to accommodate the proliferation of an evasive fungus species.
The one lesson I got from this book is how inter-, inter- interconnected the world is. A change in the forests of Japan and the USA allowed American pickers to find a self-actualized occupation. The pickers work hard, earn more money, and make their own decisions. They happily book off their regular occupations to happily stomp in the woods during mushroom season. Happier citizens create a happier society. Mother Nature has such interesting ways of establishing new equilibriums that go beyond ecosystems.
A comfortable read about many issues. Highly recommended.
Publish on Medium 2024
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