The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing Page A

use as fuel, or the right to harvest fodder in the iriai forestlands, could not have survived in the village….
    For a branch family like ours, which was in possession of a very small tract of forestland, the hamlet’s iriai forestlands were indispensable for gathering firewood, brushwood, and other necessities for living. Sometime in the 1950s, the wave of modernization began to make an impact on Ishimushiro, changing the life-style in the hamlet at an increasing pace. Villagers began to use kerosene and electricity, replace their thatched roofs with galvanized iron sheets, and adopt tractors, rendering firewood, brushwood, fodder, and thatch grass increasingly unnecessary. Consequently, many people stopped entering the satoyama except on rare occasions…. Mushroom hunting is the only economically viable activity these days. Things have changed drastically from the days when the blessings of the iriai forests meant a lot to the community.
    Later in his story, he speaks of his efforts, and those of others, to revitalize village landscapes. He explains group efforts to clean waterways and open forests. “When people say ‘Things were better in the old days,’ what they have in mind, I believe, is the joy of doing things together with many people. We have lost that joy.” 3
    Pines as well as farmers no longer flourished. As described in chapter 11 , pine wilt nematodes have killed off most of central Japan’s red pines. This is in part because satoyama neglect and abandonment haveput pines under stress. Walking through neglected satoyama forests, one sees only dead and dying pines.
    These dying pines have condemned the matsutake harvest; without its host trees, matsutake cannot survive. Indeed, it is records of matsutake decline that make the loss of Japan’s pine forests clearest. In the first part of the twentieth century, satoyama forests produced plenty of matsutake. Rural people took matsutake rather for granted; they formed one element of a suite of foraged autumn foods that complemented wild spring foods to mark the seasons. The big fuss only came later, when the mushroom became scarce and expensive in the 1970s. The drop was steep and abrupt. Pine trees were dying. In the 1980s, as Japan’s economy continued to boom, Japanese matsutake became rare—and very valuable.
    Imported matsutake crowded into the market, and even these, through the 1990s, were shockingly expensive. It is the cohort who came of age between the 1970s and the 1990s who remember the fine aroma of a thin expensive sliver in one’s soup—and who react with shock and joy at the dream of plenty.
    Matsutake help peasant forests remain in the working landscape. With high prices, the mushroom sales alone pay the taxes for the land and support maintenance. In areas where iriai rights still exist, villages harness matsutake benefits for communal use by auctioning off the right to harvest (and sell) the mushrooms. Auctions are held in the summer before anyone knows how good the mushroom season will be; villagers hold a feast at which, lubricated with drink, they urge each other to submit higher bids. The winner pays the village a hefty sum but later recoups by picking the mushrooms. 4 Yet despite communal and financial benefits, the work of maintaining the forest does not always get done, especially as villagers age. In neglected forests, pines die and matsutake disappears.
    Satoyama movements attempt to recover the lost sociality of community life. They design activities to bring together elders, young people, and children, combining education and community building with work and pleasure. There is more involved than helping out peasants—and pines. Satoyama work, volunteers explain, remakes the human spirit.
    In the economic boom that followed Japanese recovery from World War II, urban migrants left the countryside behind to pursue moderncommodities and lifestyles. Yet when economic growth slowed in the 1990s, neither education nor employment