The Mushroom at the End of the World

This section covers Chapters 18-19: “Matsutake Crusaders: Waiting for Fungal Action” and “Ordinary Assets.”

Returning to Japan, Tsing stresses that efforts to revitalize matsutake reveal the limits of human action: Bringing the mushroom back relies mostly on nature, not people, though the conservationists she finds are hoping to discover where their work may be useful, facilitating what nature can already do. These groups call themselves “Matsutake Crusaders” and they clear other trees to make room for pines, and thus, mushrooms. This brings people of various ages out of the city, to form a connection to the landscape and have meals and fellowship with one another. Tsing considers these people in contrast to their American counterparts, wondering how Japanese ideas about tree renewal center human involvement, while American ones disparage it.

In the immediate postwar period, tree plantations replaced peasant forests, only to be displaced by the 1970s as Japanese people used fossil fuels to heat their homes. Villagers no longer needed their historic rights to enter the woods, and only mushrooms were of interest there. The current high price of matsutake help some villages maintain themselves. Current forest volunteers see their work in the woods as one that “remakes the human spirit” (262), by connecting them to rural practices and one another. This is considered one possible antidote to the unique social problems of modernity such as hikikomori, which is “a young person, usually a teenage boy, who shuts himself in his room and refuses face-to-face contact” and who lives “through electronic media” (263). Thus, the mushroom crusaders exist in a society where technology is no longer redemptive.

Forest work brings together disparate social groups that would not otherwise interact: “To rebuild themselves, citizens’ groups mix science and peasant knowledge. Scientists often take leadership roles in satoyama revitalization. But they aim to incorporate vernacular knowledge; here, urban professionals and scientists consult elderly farmers for their advice” (263). The hope of a more connected life, and the possibility of mushrooms, is enough for the crusaders, as they are not hoping for a return to economic dominance, but a more personal and connected world.

Returning to China, Tsing poses questions about the nature of privatization, especially in forests. Forest experts and individuals alike are excited at the encouragement of “individual peasant households” to hold land rights in the forest, which may empower farmers. In Yunnan, the most obvious economic resource is matsutake mushrooms. The way this benefit is reaped takes the form of actions: the landowners sell off picking rights, and some supporters of the new system see it as good for both people and forest: “the auction winner should be able to pick each mushroom when its market price is highest, thus maximizing his or her income as well as that of the compensated villagers. Advocates of household contracts also argue that the resource—matsutake—will grow better without the pressures of chaotic overharvesting” (269).

Tsing then turns to what happens in practice, particularly as regards mushroom abundance or absence. One contract winner bought enough land to create a forest where no one works or forages, but some observers fear that the mushrooms will not thrive for long with the absence of human activity. One smallholder, rather than defend his property rights exclusively, allows villagers to gather firewood and forage for most of the year, except during matsutake season, a practice called “seasonal enclosure” (270). This produces larger amounts of mushrooms: “The traffic keeps the forests open, and thus welcoming to pine; it keeps the humus thin and the soils poor, thus allowing matsutake to do its good work of enriching trees” (270). Tsing draws a distinction between money made from mushrooms: which benefits from individual ownership—and the mushroom population, which requires that the system be subverted by creating a “fugitive commons” full of human activity (270). Mushrooms can become private assets, while the forests remain communal (271).

As she did in Oregon, Tsing considers how Chinese matsutake eventually become parts of a commodity chain, divorced from specific economic practices or the socio-ecological preoccupations of forest management. In China, there is no intense social ritual over prices and mushroom grades, as there was in Open Ticket. The mushroom trade in Yunnan depends on pre-existing community bonds and are thus connected to social relationships until they enter much larger markets. This new world of private forest contracts also yields destructive impulses, as some owners imported trees into cities, knowing they would not thrive there and could not be replaced. Tsing notes that many of the people she met wanted to get rich through such schemes: “so many I spoke with wanted to be bosses—if not for matsutake, for some other product extracted from the countryside” (273). These goals are markedly different form the socialist aspirations of the past, as they are self-evidently individualist. These dreams obviously contrast with those of Tsing’s Japanese subjects, as there are no communal meals, no push to recover the past, but only the drive toward an individualist future. Though communal ties facilitate one stage of the process—mushroom selling—they are not the goal in themselves, as they may be in Japan.

Tsing finds these arrangements both enlightening and disturbing, since it illustrates how much of contemporary privatization is driven not by visions of advancement for everyone, but instead, of a few. She notes that this is not “rationalization” and is “as if everyone were taking advantage of the end of the world to gather up riches before the last bits are destroyed” (276). This apocalyptic allusion underscores how much of a mischaracterization it would be to consider Tsing an optimist. Though she does not argue the end of the world is imminent, she certainly seems to consider it possible, if not likely.

The quest for wealth is usually driven by commodities that, like mushrooms, have their existence on other scales which are more collectivist. The interplay between private and public is exactly what drives the production of this wealth, and Tsing suggests this multilayered vision should remain in full view. Mushrooms themselves are, after all, the “fruit of an underground common” (276). While entrepreneurs may think of themselves as the hero of their own stories, this is not the only narrative. The mushroom may be subject to human whims, not quite an active agent always, but the ways it thrives emphasize that while capitalist narratives may be powerful, they are not always true.