“I jeopardised my wife and a trip to Machu Picchu just for a single ‘noguso’,” he says, laughing.
He believes that climate change and the growing interest in more sustainable ways of living may be winning him more attention, especially from young people.
Kazumichi Fujii, 43, a soil scientist at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI) in Japan, agreed.
“(It is) due to the Fukushima (nuclear) disaster, the Greta Thunberg movement… (and) distrust for the preceding generations and the desire for alternatives,” Fujii said.
But Fujii warns Izawa that his methods may not be as safe as he thinks, particularly his habit of tasting the soil from Poopland to demonstrate how safe it is.
The city of Edo, as pre-modern Tokyo was known, used human excrement to fertilise farmland, but “some 70 percent of residents suffered from parasite infection,” Fujii said.
“I must be seen as a hell of a freak,” laughs Izawa. “But it is due to the human-centric society.
“In the whole ecological system, no other animal but humans use toilets…the human world is rather absurd to me.”
He now strongly hopes that his body will also be decomposed in the forest instead of being cremated as is customary in Japan.
“I find the purpose of living in doing ‘noguso’,” he said.
© 2025 AFP
