NOTES ON " SHIITAKE " (Cortinellus Shiitake 

 Schrot) CULTURE 



By Dr. SHOZABURO MimRA, Forest Expert 



The Shiitake mushroom which is an important forest by-product to 

 this country, is produced to the extent of 2,000,000 kilograms a year, 

 of which annually over 700,000 kilos, valued at $500,000 are exported. 

 The study of this important product in the forest industry should not 

 be disregarded. 



I. Shiitake Culture as Hitherto Known 



The Shiitake is known to have been used as a nutritious article of 

 food for over 1,000 years. The people in ancient times seem to have 

 learned how to grow Shiitake having noticed its occasional appearance on 

 fallen trunks and rotten wood after fall of rain. They, then, began to 

 fell trees in autumn, on which the mushroom grows better than the trees 

 felled in other seasons and lately they learned to grow the mushrooms by 

 the method so called " soak and strike." The Shiitake is a saprophyte and 

 the wood on which it is to be grown should become thoroughly seasoned. 

 The Shiitake can grow on almost any broad-leaved tree trunk, but it is 

 mostly grown on the wood of oak or birch. In the case of deciduous 

 trees, they should be felled early in the fall, ever-green oaks should be 

 felled in mid-winter, and both cut into sticks 2 metres long. The bark 

 should be cut to accelerate incisions as the " arrangement of leaf." The 

 well seasoned wood so prepared is then piled up in shady places and 

 covered them with leaves and branches of the tree so as to ensure 

 successful development of spores. In the old method the people attached 

 much importance to the time of felling trees and the place in which the 

 billets are piled. The cause of the parasitic fungus, however, remained 

 little known among the country people and consequently no artificial 

 inoculation was ever tried prior to 1903, when the author undertook for 

 the first time close study of the nature of the mushroom as well as of 

 its spores and mycelium. The result that is the inoculation of spores and 



