Japan’s ‘poop-soil master’ advocates for natural decomposition in 50-Year environmental mission
“Deep in Japan’s woodlands, 74-year-old Masana Izawa has followed the same unconventional routine for over half a century—answering nature’s call just as wild bears do. “We survive by eating other living things, but you can give feces back to nature so organisms in the soil can decompose them,” he explains. “This means you’re giving life back. What could be a more sublime act?”
Known as “Fundo-shi” (“poop-soil master”), Izawa has become an unlikely celebrity in Japan through his books, lectures, and documentary appearances. His “Poopland” and centuries-old wooden “Fundo-an” (“poop-soil house”) in Sakuragawa, north of Tokyo, draw dozens of curious visitors monthly to his 7,000-square-meter woodland—roughly the size of a soccer pitch.
There, he teaches visitors the ancient art of “Noguso,” which involves digging holes, using leaves for natural cleaning, carrying water for washing, and marking spots with twigs to track decomposition. “Feel the back of these,” he says, displaying palm-sized silver poplar leaves. “[They’re] more comfortable than paper.”
A former nature photographer specializing in mushrooms until his 2006 retirement, Izawa’s unconventional philosophy emerged from an epiphany at age 20. While witnessing protests against a sewage plant’s construction, he observed, “We all produce feces, but [the demonstrators] wanted the treatment plant somewhere far away and out of sight. People who believed they were absolutely right made such an egocentric argument.”
As explained here, this realization led him to embrace outdoor defecation as an environmental solution. He argues that conventional toilets, paper, and wastewater facilities consume excessive resources, whereas natural decomposition better serves the environment. Though human waste can harbor harmful bacteria and outdoor defecation remains illegal in Japan, Izawa avoids legal troubles by practicing on his private forest property.
His dedication to these principles has come at a personal cost, including the end of his second marriage after he canceled their Machu Picchu honeymoon upon learning he couldn’t practice “noguso” at the historic site. “I jeopardized my wife and a trip to Machu Picchu just for a single ‘noguso’,” he recalls with a laugh.
As environmental consciousness grows, Izawa’s ideas are gaining attention, particularly among younger generations. Kazumichi Fujii, 43, a soil scientist at Japan’s Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute (FFPRI), attributes this interest to “the Fukushima [nuclear] disaster, the Greta Thunberg movement… distrust for the preceding generations and the desire for alternatives.”
However, Fujii cautions against some of Izawa’s more extreme practices, such as tasting soil to demonstrate its safety. He cites historical precedent: in pre-modern Tokyo, where human excrement was used as fertilizer, parasite infections affected 70 percent of residents.
“I must be seen as a hell of a freak,” Izawa acknowledges with amusement. “But it’s 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.” His final wish reflects his lifelong philosophy: rather than following Japan’s tradition of cremation, he hopes his body will naturally decompose in his beloved forest.
“I find the purpose of living in doing ‘noguso’,” he concludes, unwavering in his conviction that returning to nature, most fundamentally, is the path to environmental harmony.”.
