Ishiwara Gusha

<p>Yes, Chinese. By good fortune we are able to document the Chinese association

of certain mushrooms with thunder. There came into our possession in 1951 a

rare, 8-volume work on ethno-mycology entitled The History of Mushrooms, dated 1811 and written by Ishiwara Gusha ('the Fool from the town of Ishiwara'),

a pen-name for the Japanese classical scholar Katashi Masujima, professor in

Yedo at the school for samurai called Shoheiko. (Another of his pen-names

was Ran-en, 'Orchid Garden'.) In this curious, hand-written work the author

gathered together everything that had been said about mushrooms by Chinese

and Japanese authors, and it is our hope to present it some day to our readers

in an annotated translation. With the help of our friends Mr. and Mrs. Wango

Weng, we have discovered in the sixth volume extensive discussions of three

kinds of thunder-mushrooms. All three make excellent eating. First there is

the lei-ching t'an, 'thunder-aroused mushroom':</p>

<p>

Gordon Wasson, Mushrooms, Russia and History, pg. 124 ff</p>