Mottainai is usually translated as what a waste, and that is roughly right, but the English phrase points at the wrong thing. What a waste, in English, is about money or effort. Mottainai is about the thing.
It is said when food is thrown away, when a light is left on, when a gift is used carelessly, when something that still works is replaced. And the feeling underneath it is not guilt about cost. It is closer to regret on the object’s behalf: this thing had more in it, and it did not get to give it.
Where the word comes from
The root is Buddhist. Mottai is a word for the intrinsic worth of a thing, the substance that makes it what it is. Mottainai is that worth being lost, or not honoured. The word was used in temples long before it was used at dinner tables, and it still carries some of that: the sense that a thing has a nature, and that using it fully is a kind of respect.
That is why mottainai is said about a half-eaten rice bowl and not about a bad investment. The investment lost money. The rice lost its purpose.
What the word changes
The English framing of waste leads to accounting. How much did it cost, how much was lost, is it worth fussing about. The mottainai framing leads somewhere else. It asks whether the thing was used for what it was for, and whether there is still use in it.
That question turns out to be practical. A chipped bowl is not waste. A jacket with a torn lining is not waste. A vegetable that is soft is not waste, yet. The word puts a pause between noticing and discarding, and in the pause the object usually turns out to have something left.
The practice
For one week, say the word. Out loud or not, when something is about to be thrown away, replaced, or left unused. Mottainai. Then ask the question it carries: is there still something in this?
Sometimes the answer is no, and the thing goes, and that is fine. The practice is not about keeping everything. It is about the pause.
Keep a short list of what the pause saved. Most people find it is five or six things in a week, usually small, usually food, and that the list is more surprising than they expected.
What people notice
The first is how automatic discarding is. The pause reveals how often a thing leaves the house without anyone having decided that it should.
The second is that the word spreads. After a week it starts being said about time, about a morning, about a conversation that was cut short. That is the original sense returning: mottainai was never only about objects. It was about worth, wherever worth is.
Where this fits
Danshari is about what comes in and what leaves. Wabi-sabi is about what is allowed to age. Mottainai is the word that stands between them, at the moment a thing is about to be given up on, and asks whether it has to be.
Thirty days on paper. The Danshari Workbook takes the three characters of danshari in order, ten days each. Mottainai is the word said at the door of the second one. You get it by email, free. → Get the workbook ($6)
Continue Reading
This article is part of a series exploring Japanese philosophy and intentional living: