There are shiitake and there is shiitake. The beauty of nature is seen on the simplicity of a mushroom. The earliest written record of shiitake cultivation is seen in the Records of Longquan County compiled by He Zhan in 1209 during the Southern Song dynasty.The 185-word description of shiitake cultivation from that literature was later crossed-referenced many times and eventually adapted in a book by a Japanese horticulturist Satō Chūryō in 1796, the first book on shiitake cultivation in Japan.

source: wikipedia