Wildfires continue to burn across Los Angeles and firefighters continue to battle scrub fire east of Whangārei. Video / NZ Herald
When nature calls, Masana Izawa has followed the same routine for more than 50 years: heading out to the woods in Japan, dropping his pants and doing as bears do.
“We survive by eating other living things. But you can give faeces back to nature so that organisms in the soil can decompose them,” the 74-year-old told AFP.
“This means you are giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?”
“Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”) Izawa is something of a celebrity in Japan, publishing books, delivering lectures and appearing in a documentary.
People flock to his “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in Sakuragawa north of Tokyo, sometimes dozens of them a month.
“Feel the back of these. Can you tell how soft they are?” he said, showing palm-sized silver poplar leaves picked from a branch.
“[It’s] more comfortable than paper.”
"Poop master" Masana Izawa playing on a swing in his forest in Sakuragawa, Ibaraki Prefecture. Photo / AFP
‘Egocentric’
Izawa is a former nature photographer who specialised in mushrooms before retiring in 2006.
His excrement epiphany came at age 20 when he saw a protest against the construction of a sewage plant.
“We all produce faeces, but [the demonstrators] wanted the treatment plant somewhere far away and out of sight,” he said.
“People who believed they were absolutely right made such an egocentric argument.”
He concluded that to alleviate his own conscience at least, outdoor defecating was the answer.
Falling foul
Toilets, toilet paper and wastewater facilities require huge amounts of water, energy and chemicals.
Letting soil do the work is much better for the environment, said Izawa, who believes more people should follow his lead.
Human waste - more than other animals' - can contain bacteria that are potentially harmful to the environment, and defecating outside is banned in Japan.
But since Izawa owns the forest around his centuries-old house, he has not fallen foul of the authorities.
He digs up old spots that he said shows human stools are entirely and quickly broken down, unless they contain antibiotic medicines.
“Fungal activities degrade and transform things like dead animals, excrement and fallen leaves into nutritious earth, on which a forest grows,” he says.
Masana Izawa finds a spot to defecate in his forest. Photo / AFP
Risky business
Izawa’s iron beliefs have cost him dearly, not least his second marriage after an incident involving Machu Picchu, the popular tourist site in Peru.
He cancelled a leg of their honeymoon trip to the site after learning he would have to use the facilities.
“I jeopardised my wife and a trip to Machu Picchu just for a single ‘noguso’,” he said, laughing.
He believes 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% 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.
