Far from being next to godliness, the Japanese obsession with cleanliness puts individuals at higher risk of disease and may even threaten the entire country, according to parasitologist Koichiro Fujita.
"These hygiene-obsessed people will be extinct in the next 100 years" unless there is a change, the 61-year-old professor at Tokyo Medical and Dental University warns.
Fujita's solution, it seems, is the tapeworm. He began cultivating the parasite in his body four years ago and currently has three in his intestines.