The matsutake has long been Japan's most prized mushroom - and it cannot be cultivated. In recent years, volunteer groups have gathered to recreate the matsutake's favored places; these people aim to please the mushroom by building worlds in which it might liketo live. Such worlds mimic the ecologies that the matsutake has created over millennia: well-spaced pines on mineral soils. Volunteers know that they must be humble enough to let the mushrooms take the lead.

Anthropologist Shiho Satsuka and artist Liu Yi collaborate to tell the story of matsutake's landscape-making, both over deep time and in the present, and both above and below the ground.

Detail pictures: