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lead=yes is a Japanese phrase conveying a sense of regret over waste, or to state that one does not deserve something because it is too good. The term can be translated to English as "What a waste!" or the old saying, "Waste not, want not." Mottainai: In Japan, creativity is key to a no-waste ideal BBC News, Johnny Motley, 25 January 2024
A form of the word, motaina (モタイナ) appears in the late-14th or early-15th century Noh play , apparently in a sense close to (1).
The 18th-century Kokugaku philologist Motoori Norinaga, in the preface to his 1798 treatise Tamaarare ('Ice Crystals (like) Jewels'; 玉あられ) designed to stir people up from their sleepy acquiescence in acquired customs that were not authentically native, and was critical of the use of the word to express gratitude.
He felt its use for such a purpose (along with those of and osoreōi) was vitiated by its ultimate derivation from imitating forms of Chinese rhetoric and greetings.Markus Rüttermann, "So That We Can Study Letter-Writing": The Concept of Epistolary Etiquette in Premodern Japan, Journal of the International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2006 18,1 pp.57-128,86.
In his 1934 essay Nihon-seishin to Bukkyō, the Buddhologist Katō Totsudō (加藤咄堂; 1870-1949) included the "aversion to wastefulness" (mottainai) in a putative series of what he considered to be "core Japanese personality traits". Chūō Bukkyō 1934 18/3 pp.1-12,11-12 cited in Ives below.Christopher Ives, The Mobilization of Doctrine: Buddhist Contributions to Imperial Ideology in Modern Japan, Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 26, 1/2 Spring 1999 pp.83-106,90:'Katō Totsudō also identifies purportedly core Japanese personality traits of aversion to wastefulness ( mottainai: 勿体無い), gratitude ( arigatai: 有難い) and sympathy ( ki no doku: 気の毒) with the Three Mental Attitudes of laity set forth in the Upāsaka–śīla sūtra the mind of poverty ( hinkyūshin:貧窮心), the mind of requiring blessings ( hōonshin:報恩心) and the mind of merit ( kudokushin:功徳心).'
It means (i) the shape/form of a thing or (ii) something that is, or the fact of being, impressive or imposing (モノモノシキコト; ).
The compound that is pronounced as mottai in Japanese appears in Sino-Japanese dictionaries as a Chinese word in a sense similar to (ii), but mottainashi does not, as it is an indigenous Japanese word.
The word nai in mottainai resembles a Japanese negative ("there is no mottai"), but may have originally been used as an emphatic ("tremendous mottai").
, former professor of Nagano University, noted that the definition (3) in Kōjien was the one used most frequently by modern Japanese. The second sense is seen in Japanese newspapers when they refer to members of the imperial family as having been present at such-and-such an event, not necessarily implying wastefulness but rather gratitude or awe. , another Japanese dictionary, gives a similar ordering of these definitions.
Hasegawa traces this increase in the frequency of meaning (3) to a historical semantic shift in which the original meaning, meaning (1), became less prominent. Citing the Kyoto University Japanese literature scholar ,
Hasegawa states that the word originated as slang in the Kamakura period, and that by the mid 15th century had perhaps already acquired the meanings of (2) and (3).
In November 2002, the English-language, Japan-based magazine Look Japan ran a cover story entitled "Restyling Japan: Revival of the 'Mottainai' Spirit", documenting the motivation amongst volunteers in a "toy hospital" in Japan to "develop in children the habit of looking after their possessions", the re-emergence of repair shops specializing in repairing household appliances or children's clothes, the recycling of PET bottles and other materials, the collection of waste edible oil, and more generally the efforts to stop the trend of throwing away everything that can no longer be used, i.e. the efforts of reviving "the spirit of mottainai".
The "Mottainai Spirit" is seen as human resources and nature surrounding us. In that context, Hitoshi Chiba, the author, described mottainai as follows:
In a 2014 paper on an apparent increase in interest in the idea of mottainai in early 21st-century Japan, historian Eiko Maruko Siniawer summarized the views of several Japanese writers who claimed that mottainai was a specifically Buddhist concept.
She also cited a number of views of Japanese authors who believed that it was a uniquely Japanese "contribution to the world", whose views she characterized as mostly being "deeply rooted in cultural generalizations, essentialisms, and disdainful comparisons between countries".
At the 2009 United Nations Summit on Climate Change, she said Cited in Siniawer, 2014, p. 177.,
Even at personal level, we can all reduce, re-use and recycle, what is embraced as Mottainai in Japan, a concept that also calls us to express gratitude, to respect and to avoid wastage.
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