Mottainai

Japanese have been believing that everything in the universe has a spirit and a life since ancient times.

-Tsukumogami

…

Akio Morita was a cofounder of Japan’s Sony Corporation. In 1986, he published an autobiography, Made in Japan, a book that was important to me. (I strongly recommend reading it.) Discussing how the culture of Japan influences business, he educated me on the concept of mottainai. (This is why we read books!) The inability to translate the word directly to English underscores the impact of the concept. Western culture (U.S. at least) is almost foundationally throwaway. We do not expect anything to last very long, and even if it does, we will throw it away just to have a shiny new one. We tend to value any object only insofar as it benefits us in the moment. Japanese culture, Morita suggested, is perhaps the anthesis of that.

The All About Japan Web site says this about the term:

Everyday usage of mottainai is directly tied to the Buddhist concept of regret over squandering or misusing material objects or other resources. But it’s actually had various meanings over the years, stemming from the words mottai (勿体), which indicates an air of importance or sanctity, and nai (無い), meaning a lack of something.

The paper napkin, already providing a service.

The word ‘mottainai’ was not familiar to the Western world in 1986; today the “environmental community” has adopted it, and any coherent meaning is haphazard at best. My understanding, based on Morita’s book, is that all objects should be appreciated in almost a spiritual way. In discussing this, I’ve always used the example of a paper napkin. What could be more disposable, more inherently throwaway? But that napkin performs a useful service, and it does so because of a chain of, let’s call it ancestry that is rarely thought about or appreciated. That napkin exists because:

Over some years a tree grew and matured. This tree had been nurtured by soil and sun and water and air and animal excrement and a whole biosphere.

A human being worked (labor) at removing that tree from a forest. He used equipment designed and created (labor) by more human beings.

The tree was transported using more equipment designed and created (labor) by humans.

In a factory or factories, the tree was pulped and treated and formed into what we would call a paper napkin. This required the work of humans (labor) and equipment designed and created (labor) by other humans.

The resulting napkin was packaged and transported and inventoried by humans (labor) using equipment and facilities created by other humans (labor).

Contributing to the humans who enabled creation of the napkin was a whole army of other humans who supported them — families, educators and facilitators of all sort’ virtually armies of people. All made their small contribution to the existence of the paper napkin.

Finally, humans placed that napkin in a place where it was accessible and its service could be rendered.

Recyclables, in a bucket in my kitchen.

After that napkin was used (I would hope efficiently and respectfully.) it is thrown away — in a trash receptacle destined for a landfill. My best hope is the landfill will be a compost pile over the centuries.

I do not consider it wrong to throw that napkin away. However, invoking the concept of mottainai, we should do so with reverence demanded by the full range of its creators – from the tree and the nesting birds who dropped their nutrients into the soil to all the humans who labored to provide that napkin’s service to us. To have no appreciation for all the life forces that contributed for our benefit would be wrong; disrespectful of the very life forces we each possess.

The Welch’s Grape Juice bottle cap, for your appreciation.

This morning I finished off a bottle of Welch’s Grape Juice. Diluted with seltzer, it’s a tasty breakfast wakeup on the rocks. Dutifully I rinsed the plastic bottle and put it in my recycling bucket. I rinsed the cap and placed it on the counter to dry before putting it in the trash (it’s not considered a recyclable). A few hours later I was in the kitchen, picked up the dry cap and thoughtlessly tossed it in the trash. And mottainai instantly stabbed me in the heart. I had given no heed whatsoever to all the life that had been poured into that little piece of purple plastic. It had sealed the bottle from time of bottling through transport through my many days of cold storage and use. And I acted as if I didn’t care. So, powered by regret, I recovered it from the trash, photographed it — and now I present it here for appreciation by all! Imagine all it took to produce it and make it available for service. It literally goes back to dinosaurs and petroleum evolution. Extracted and processed by countless humans, it takes form as an object providing a useful service.

As the Buddhists, cosmologists and some physicists and artists tell us, we really are all ONE. It seems so to me. If you look, you can see it in a plastic bottle cap.

Good Mottainai to you!