Talk:Mottainai

First draft

This report is not translation from Japanese. I am the text which I considered by myself. It understands, if a Japanese report can be translated and obtained. I want to ask a check of everybody.--LongLongAgo 04:50, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• Ah, I see. I had thought that it was a machine translation from the article in the Japanese wiki. English as a second language, eh? No worries. We'll get someone to help with it. --Blu Aardvark | ^{(talk) | (contribs)} 08:43, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

• I attempted to sort it out a bit, (adding a little based on having just seen Maathai speak) but I am afraid some of the meaning was lost in translation. I did not change the translations of the word itself, as I don't speak Japanese. --User:Windupcanary 18 March 2006

Citation

[1] (in Japanese) by the Mainichi_Shimbun.--222.5.247.120 08:04, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Intro

The intro needs to be rewritten. It starts out with very hard to understand definitions. (It's better if you get past that part but I'm not sure how many people would persevere.) RJFJR (talk) 17:10, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

"Mottainai" as an international word?

Article has turned up nicely, but what do you think about this point? "The word has also entered the English language and is also in use in other languages[dubious – discuss]." I'd definitely say no, that's just what Japanese people would like. We already have the part about Ms. Maathai effort to make the word more known, so I think the best thing would be to erase this sentence. Any opinions? --Jair Moreno 27 January 2008

I agree. I never heard the word until I came to Japan. I think it's a great word but if I used it in England no-one would know what I was on about. 219.176.20.5 (talk) 11:38, 8 February 2009 (UTC)

Agreed. Mottainai simply means "wasteful" or "what a waste." I don't know of a single use of the word that couldn't be translated into English exactly as such. This article needs to be revamped. As it is, it's little more than nihonjinron 180.5.154.72 (talk) 07:41, 25 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed - this article is Mainichi Shimbun self-promotion and blatant nihonjinron. I've tried to clean it up, but it still irks me. The word has not entered the English language in an strength - a Google search on it shows several pages of, you guessed it, the Wangari Maathai promotion. Candidate for deletion imho. Cypella (talk) 07:10, 30 April 2013 (UTC)

Pronunciation

How do you pronounce this word? Could someone knowledgeable add a pronunciation guide (in phonetics)? Thanks. AugustinMa (talk) 11:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

[mo-taj-naj] This is a very basic transcription of the Japanese sounds. There may be subtle complexities that I have not accounted for. I have used dashes to separate the syllables, which is not the IPA convention. It seems that there is no accent in this word. Each syllable is given equal time. The [j] is the semivowel that joins the [a], and has the sound of the letter "y", as in yes [jɛs]. The two together sound like the vowel center of the English night [najt] Armslice (talk) 22:15, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

[mo.tːa.i.na.i]

This is how mottainai is actuallty pronounced in Japanese. Mo is not equal to nai as two syllables. Mo is equal to na in time, since Japanese is a mora-timed language. The periods represent moraic boundaries. With how Japanese words are usually pronounced in English, it would become [moʊʔ.taɪˈnaɪ] for North American speakers. This means it would sound like the English words "moat tie nigh" with the last word stressed. Though Japanese does not have stress it has a pitch accent, and putting the stress on the same part that has the pitch accent is a way to approximate the Japanese pronunciation while speaking English. I'm not so sure about how people from England would handle it, but I think it would either be [məʊʔ.taɪˈnaɪ] or [mɒʔ.taɪˈnaɪ]. (Ejoty (talk) 00:45, 28 August 2009 (UTC))

Greenwashing?

This whole "mottainai" campaign is being pushed (and funded) by the Mainichi Shimbun and the Itochu Corporation, one of the largest companies in the world. Forgive me if I'm a bit suspicious about their sudden concern with people wasting things. Cypella (talk) 07:03, 3 May 2013 (UTC)

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Merge?

This article contains basically three segments: (i) definition, translation and etymology; (ii) Hitoshi Chiba; and (iii) Wangari Maathai.

(i) is mostly unsourced and almost certainly all wrong, and when used to fluff out this article from a single paragraph as it does violates WP:NOTDICT.

(ii) is sourced entirely to Look Japan magazine, which might be reliable for the opinion of its author but is said opinion notable? Those expat "Japanese culture" magazines are generally childish in their level of nuance, like citing a primary school textbook. And it's not even a problem of poor verifiability on some factual claims -- it's all just tagging the word "mottainai" onto general environmentalism info.

(iii) appears to be the only substantial and verifiable content, but I kinda feel like it could be merged into our Wangari Maathai article.

This article as it stands is essentially a stub-level fork of that one, yet that one doesn't even mention "mottainai" except in a see also link to this one. Yes, the Maathai article is fairly long, but one more paragraph wouldn't hurt it.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:41, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

(I reformatted your three points into three paragraphs; I hope that's OK.) I very much agree. The first paragraph is really incoherent; it relies for sourcing the "mottainai ('What a waste!') can't be translated" meme to yet more amateurish pseudolinguistics. I despair, basically. Imaginatorium (talk) 05:34, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: (It's okay, but if you do that again you should probably check that you don't accidentally merge some other stuff that's "outside" the three points into the first or third! :P ) Well, we don't need an AFD consensus to delete to perform a merge, so there isn't really need to despair. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:44, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

additional references for expansion

Avoiding waste with the Japanese concept of 'mottainai'

Los Angeles' Little Tokyo Looks for a Sustainable Future With Some 'Mottainai'

Japan Times says "mottainai can also be used in the context of missed opportunities." [2] Dream Focus 06:56, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: None of those are reliable sources on Japanese linguistics( let alone Buddhist or Shinto or Pastafarian philosophy), and do not support the assertion that "mottainai" is some kind of unique concept. It's just a common phrase meaning "what a waste!" Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

I looked at the sources, not what you were quoting them as saying; JT is an acceptable source for a BLUE claim (a usage example of a common Japanese word), but what would we even want to use that claim for? Are you trying to say that "It doesn't just mean What a waste! -- it can also mean What a waste [of a good opportunity]!"? Because that would be funny if I thought it was meant as a joke. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:25, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources. If what Wikipedia considers a reliable source says mottainai is a "concept", then it doesn't matter what you personally believe. Dream Focus 11:42, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: Find a university press or peer-reviewed source by a Buddhist specialist that supports that assertion. Otherwise, the assertion of every Japanese dictionary that it is a common Japanese word stands, especially in light of the fact that none of the encyclopedias/dictionaries of Buddhism and Buddhist terms I checked mention it. Wikipedia does not, and never has, treated popular news websites as reliable sources for claims about linguistics, religion or other scholarly fields when they are contradicted by superior sources. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:59, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

BTW, please refrain from strawman and ad hominem arguments. Nowhere above or elsewhere did I cite "what I personally believe". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:00, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

Wait ... but it doesn't even matter if it is "a concept" or not; even if it were a noun (as you, our article and the popular sources you cite appear to use it), we already have another article on that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:03, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

• I have placed some search links above. Here's an example of a source that they lead to: Sato, Yuriko (2017), "Mottainai: a Japanese sense of anima mundi", Journal of Analytical Psychology, 62 (1), John Wiley & Sons: 147–154, doi:10.1111/1468-5922.12282 This associates the topic with both Buddhism and Shinto. Andrew D. (talk) 20:47, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: I don't know what "played some search links above" means. Anyway, have you read that article? If you want to use it to fix the article, fire ahead. I have more important things to be doing with my time at the moment and don't actually intend to implement my merge proposal without a consensus of editors either brought here by an RFC or from WP:JAPAN, which I probably won't try to get while I'm being revenge-hounded by a couple of users who have never edited the article for some remarks I made about a certain WikiProject more than a week ago. So you've got plenty of time to actually improve the article with all these wonderful sources. (Note, however, that if I see you inserting any good-faith misinterpretations of what those specialist sources say, I will probably fix the errors.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:07, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

BTW, Sato's "associating" mottainai "with ... Buddhism", as you say, doesn't explain why neither the Princeton Dictionary nor the Routledge Encyclopedia mention it anywhere in their texts, let alone include standalone entries on it as a "Buddhist concept", so you still have not, after almost two weeks, justified your "ancient Chinese secret" claim. I'm still waiting on that. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:11, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

：：：：The Sato article is behind a $38 paywall. I think I was right to despair. But I wonder: is there a nihonjinron category that could be attached? Imaginatorium (talk) 11:08, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

Category:Nihonjinron—haven't gotten around to it yet. It should be easy to populate. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:35, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

• Here's another source: Suzuki, Yasushi; Kar, Rabi N. (15 September 2017), "India-Japan Cultural Distance on the Mottainai Ethics", Towards A Common Future, pp. 155–170. Andrew D. (talk) 22:36, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

How does a Japanese source using the word as a simple adjective change anything? Yes, ex-pats in Japan and people with Japanese dealings are familiar with the word and use it in English -- we don't have standalone articles on mendokusai or yabai. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:03, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I agree with Hijiri that all this smells of horseshit, but it's probably not worth the effort fighting it. Bushido's a better one to fight over—that article's pretty much bull from top to bottom, and fighting the mountain of "reliable" sources there would serve the world good.

The rest of you should be embarrassed that your standards are so low. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:41, 22 February 2018 (UTC)

I added a reference to an article in the Journal of Asian Studies from Cambridge University Press. It backs up the statements from two other sources, neither of which IMO deserved to be complained about. Editors should be able to cite where they read the information, even if it's not from academia. Also I don't get the complaints about the origins of the term. 勿体 is a Buddhist term, right? That should be easy enough to verify. I think that Hijiri88 needs to back off a bit. We can request improvements in an article without being confrontational about it. – Margin1522 (talk) 03:16, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: Sorry to be late -- I said on my own talk page and RSN that I would be trying to limit my activity on this article.

勿体 is a Buddhist term, right? Is it? I checked a bunch of Japanese dictionaries, none of which define it as a 仏語 or give a definition that implies some specifically Buddhist origin of the word, and it doesn't appear in the Japanese cross-reference index of the Princeton Dictionary of Buddhism. Do you have a source?

Anyway, I don't think your recent addition to the article is a good idea, since Maathai appears to have misunderstood the meaning of the word (mottainasa is not something good that is "embraced" by the Japanese) and giving that quote could mislead our readers. I also can't figure out what you were talking about here -- what "Japanese sources", and what "quote marks" in those sources?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:24, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: I thought I replied to this earlier. Did I forget to hit the publish button, or was it removed somehow? Anyway, the Japanese sources were the scholars quoting Maathai, and the quote marks were the ones around her statements. It's a long story, but from experience this needs to be checked. Japanese being a topic-prominent language, quote marks often have a topic marker function. Authors quote words they think are important to the topic. Thus, rather than <exact transcription>, the quote marks might have indicated <the important part of what she said>. When handling something like this, it's best to verify the original or remove the quote marks and treat it as a paraphrase. I was able to verify the original of one of her quotes, so that's what I quoted. I think for the purposes of that section, the current meaning in Japanese is less important than her understanding of it. About the Buddhism, I don't want to get into it, but see the lecture I cited below. It seems to be a wasei-kango, originally 物体, dating from the medieval period. When you see a metaphysical term like 物体, and learn that it's that old, doesn't it seem like it has to be from Buddhism? This was centuries before people started translating terms from Western physics. – Margin1522 (talk) 02:30, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: I don't see how you could have replied to me already, since my last comment on this page was before your first.

Anyway, I already know all that stuff about topic markers and the like; the problem is that it doesn't seem to have anything to do with the source in question, which (a) is in English, and (b) doesn't give any of that text in quotation marks. the Japanese sources were the scholars quoting Maathai, and the quote marks were the ones around her statements What sources are you talking about? I'm talking about a particular article by Mizue Sasaki, cited in our article, written in English, in which Sasaki does briefly quote Maathai herself, but what we do is quote Sasaki's words (which Sasaki does not give in quotation marks). The problem is that without direct attribution, it looks like we are quoting Maathai. Are you saying that the Sasaki quotes should be removed and replaced with a direct quotation from Maathai?

As for the second part, I'm not sure I agree; lots of "medieval" (admittedly more Nara/Heian than Kamakura/Muromachi like this, but still) Japanese metaphysics comes from Taoism, which insofar as it can be distinguished from Buddhism probably should be. Making a talk page argument that the word is a "Buddhist word" just because it predates the Meiji period and relates to a metaphysical concept seems iffy to me.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:52, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

That's a point. The Sasaki quotes are her words, not Maathai's. I agree that they should be attributed to Sasaki. – Margin1522 (talk) 05:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Then why did you remove the tag? I thought the reason parameter (This section consists almost exclusively of quotes from Sasaki, presented as though they were quotes from Wangari Maathai. If we don't have actual quotes from Maathai, we should paraphrase, since it would be almost impossible to quote like this without making it look like a misattribution.) was clear enough. I actually don't think attributing the quotes to Sasaki is a good idea in this case; Sasaki notes that Maathai "explained that the meaning of the term mottainai encompasses the four Rs"? That's pretty awkward writing. Anyway, now that I've seen the "actual quotes from Maathai", I have other problems; I think paraphrasing Sasaki is the only solution here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:50, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Why? Because I wanted to get rid of the template. I thought the edit summary, the template message, and the choice of the alias "quote farm" were all rather rude to the editors who wrote that section. So, since the content was essentially paraphrasing, I rewrote it slightly, removed the quote marks, and removed the tag. Apparently I didn't rewrite it enough, because that triggered a copyvio reaction and the edit was reverted and made invisible. If you want to have a go yourself, please do. – Margin1522 (talk) 09:44, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

If a source paraphrases someone else's words, that source then "owns" that paraphrase; you are not allowed copy it onto Wikipedia without quotation marks. Anyway, I might take a shot at it later, once I'm finished with the other stuff that's been consuming my attention (I'm sure you've noticed that the only edit I made to this article in the past two weeks was to remove a single piece of OR that I had already tagged earlier) assuming we are now in agreement that the quotes from Sasaki are presented as though they were quotes from Wangari Maathai and are therefore inappropriate. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:05, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Margin1522: I can't speak for the others, but my complaint is presenting this word as a Buddhist concept deeply rooted in Japanese culture—the lead used to tell us it's "a tradition, a cultural practice, and an idea which is still present in Japanese culture". That's worlds different from noting its etymological origins in Buddhism. Compare to how it is presented in the lead to the Japanese version of the article. People are playing fast and loose with the sources here (and some of the sources seem to play fast and loose with the facts). Keep in mind that sources are necessary but not sufficient in and of themselves for including anything in an article. There are RSes that contradict the consensus of the experts—our articles, though, must reflect that consensus. For instance, there is a mountain of RSes supporting the Macro-Altaic hypothesis, but our article correctly and prominently states that it is widely discredited. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:48, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

"We often hear in Japan the expression 'mottainai,' which loosely means 'wasteful' but in its full sense conveys a feeling of awe and appreciation for the gifts of nature or the sincere conduct of other people."—this is the kind of thing I'm talking about. What does the author base this on? In twenty years in Japan I have never witnessed this "awe", and I've never heard the word used in such a way. Then it goes into the whole "never leave a grain of rice on your plate", which from what I've heard was already history before I was even born (and came more from economic necessity than devotion to Buddhist principles ...) Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 04:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't know if it should be called "awe", but it's something like an article that I worked on a while ago, by a Japanese garden designer who says "The garden teaches the suchness or intrinsic value of each thing, the connectedness, harmony, tranquility, and sacredness of the everyday. Developing a sense of respect for all things is no small step in becoming an ethical human being..." This isn't an uncommon sentiment. You also see it in lectures by お坊さん for laypeople. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:50, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

Margin1522: "This isn't an uncommon sentiment."—is it a common sentiment? Because that's what the article was telling us. Presenting edge cases (Shunmyō the monk) as the common case is a violation of WP:WEIGHT, at the very, very least. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:03, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

More pertinent, I think, to ask whether this sentiment has any "uniquely Japanese" features (or anything in particular to do with the ordinary Japanese word alleged to be the subject of this article)? I would think it was universal: from Ghandi to Patience Strong ("You are nearer God's heart in the garden than anywhere else on earth" and all that). Imaginatorium (talk) 06:18, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

So we have a number of questions for the authors of this article, amongst them:

• Is mottainai uniquely Japanese? Do specialists, with data to back themselves up, have a consensus this is so?
• Does the mottainai presented in this article represent how the word is typically used (again, backed up with data and the consensus of experts)? If not, does the article make this clear?
• What makes mottainai worth of an entire article, rather than a paragraph or two in Environmental issues in Japan? Especially given there are so many unsourced statements in this very short article, and "Environmental issues in Japan" itself is also quite short.

Let's start with getting answers to these questions. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 06:38, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

As a matter of fact, yes, I do think it's common. More common than the idea that we are a Chosen People and the world is ours to use as we see fit because God gave it to us. But whatever. The authors of this article wanted to write about the use of mottainai by environmentalists. I don't see why they shouldn't be allowed to. You don't see Nobel prize winners explaining mendokusai or yabai to the United Nations. – Margin1522 (talk) 11:06, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

"yes, I do think it's common"—great, so back it up with a citation. I can't make heads or tails of the rest of your comment. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:14, 23 February 2018 (UTC)

How about the abstract of the article mentioned above by Andrew Davidson? "The Japanese expression ‘Mottainai!’ can be translated as ‘What a waste!’ or ‘Don't be wasteful!’ However, mottainai means much more than that. It expresses a sense of concern or regret for whatever is wasted because its intrinsic value is not properly utilized. Buddhism and Japan's indigenous religion, Shinto, are integral to the Japanese psyche, accordingly the other-than-human world is also experienced and lived in daily life. In the Japanese worldview everything in nature is endowed with spirit, every individual existence is dependent on others and all are connected in an ever-changing world. Mottainai offers a glimpse of the anima mundi inherent in this worldview." Maybe the article could be edited to make this idea of "intrinsic value" a bit clearer. – Margin1522 (talk) 00:35, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Uh-huh. We know, we know—"The Japanese are such a deep, spiritual people" and all that bull. Can you work the word "ineffable" into the article, too, please? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 00:54, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

Oh, wonderful—we also have Muda (Japanese term), Mura (Japanese term) and Muri (Japanese term), articles devoted entirely to their specialized meanings in Lean manufacturing (from which they never should have been spun off). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 01:46, 24 February 2018 (UTC)

• I added those links because those concepts are related to this one. Here's some commentary which links them together and which may provide further inspiration. It's interesting to find that the word mu (negative) comes into it. That's another useful word with Buddhist connotations and I have across that before Hofstadter's discussion of Zen.

Margin1522 above talks about gardening. That reminds me of sharawadgi – an aesthetic concept which seems to have come from China and/or Japan but no-one is quite sure of the etymology. I started an article about that five years ago and that seed has grown quite well and so I expect that the page about mottainai will develop over the years as different contributors develop it. Natural organic development may lack order or symmetry but this is considered beautiful in such contexts. I suppose that bonsai has a similar aesthetic.

Andrew D. (talk) 10:27, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Andrew D.: I don't doubt you added those links in good faith. You continue to thoroughly miss the point—that the article confounds the everyday usage of the term with its more specialized ones. Average Japanese people simply do not walk around "in awe of nature", and their everyday usage of the word is entirely unencumbered with its specialized religious or environmentalist usages (mu, in contrast, does not have such everyday usage when not used agglunatively—it's a specialized religious term). This article cannot spread such misinformation. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:36, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

References

A different approach

Right now the article attempts to tell us what the word means in Japanese and how it's used (while making a botch of it). Since this article wouldn't exist if it weren't for Wangari Maathai, how about instead of leading with:

"Mottainai (Japanese: 勿体無い, frequently written in kana alone) is a Japanese term conveying a sense of regret concerning waste."

—let's have the article define the word in the context of the article content—something like:

"Mottainai is a term of Japanese origin that has been used by environmentalists. The term in Japanese conveys a sense of regret over waste; the exclamation "Mottainai! can translate as "What a waste!" Japanese environmentalists have used the term to encourage people to "reduce, reuse and recycle", and Kenyan environmentalist Wangari Maathai the term at the United Nations as a slogan to promote environmental protextion."

Etymology and alternate uses should be kept out of the lead so as not to be misleading (), and etymological information should be reined in even in the body (more than a paragraph will need some extraordinary sourcing or risk violating WP:WEIGHT). Care should be taken as to what this article is about—it is not about the word in Japanese (which would not merit an article), but about its use by environmentalists. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:32, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Basically agree with the above, which is very similar to my proposal to refocus and merge into the Maathai article, just with this page left as a standalone rather than a redirect. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:35, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose No sources are provided to support these claims and proposals. We should work from sources rather than engaging in OR. Andrew D. (talk) 10:40, 25 February 2018 (UTC)