Talk:Mottainai

RFC on Yuriko Sato citation

The following discussion is an archived record of a request for comment. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this discussion. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

For any disputed source to be considered reliable, it must meet certain standards. It must be WP:REPUTABLE: Articles should be based on reliable, independent, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy. There are a number of people who want to include the disputed source, yet they have not provided any evidence the paper was published in a reputable (as defined above) journal. On the other hand, a number of participants here have pointed out that the publication containing the disputed source is not a peer-reviewed publication (as some have asserted), and the person who wrote the paper is not considered an expert in this field. Therefore, this discussion can only be closed as no consensus to include the Yuriko Sato citation in this article. ···日本穣 · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 01:36, 2 December 2020 (UTC)

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Under the etymology section, should this Wikipedia article include the untagged text "According to Yuriko Sato, mottainai originated as a Buddhist term, though this fact is not common knowledge even in Japan. The word later become connected to the Shinto concept that all objects have souls." The citation would be Yuriko Sato's article "Mottainai: a Japanese sense of anima mundi". Some of this material exists in the article with tags[1], but I want to ask whether it should be included without the tags. Martinthewriter (talk) 04:44, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Survey (RFC on Yuriko Sato citation)

• Include. Yuriko Sato's article is an excellent peer-reviewed work of specialist scholarship on the Japanese concept of mottainai. Many have argued on this talk page that it may be the very best source of information on the subject, and I fully agree. So far, no contrary scholarship has been found disagreeing with the Buddhist etymology and Shintoist significance of mottainai, so I feel it's clear that we ought to include the data. Some of the relevant passages from Sato's article are "Japanese use this word in daily life but many of them may not know that it is originally a Buddhist term... Mottainai is originally a Buddhist term, but it also has ties with Shinto animism – the idea that all beings have spirits" (Also, in my opinion, each editor voting here should really limit themselves to one or two posts per person within this RFC so that everyone can get their view across without being drowned out.)Martinthewriter (talk) 04:44, 3 March 2020 (UTC)Some people from the previous RFC were pinged recently[2], but not all of them were. We should also ping @Lightburst, Francis Schonken, IvoryTower123, Challenger.rebecca, and Krow750:. And hopefully we can leave this RFC publicly posted for long enough to get significant input from many new voices as well.Martinthewriter (talk) 06:03, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
  • It's not peer reviewed. It's a conference paper, presented at the Twentieth Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, a conference for Jungian Psychologists. The proceedings are available on Google Books.[3] As previously mentioned on this Talk page, Sato Yuriko is a clinical psychotherapist; and is, respectfully, when discussing etymology, outside her field. - Ryk72 ^talk 06:16, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

MTW's above selective pinging, of those who !voted for "version A" despite it having already been demonstrated that version A contained circular sourcing for whatever reason, is obvious canvassing. Pinging those who !voted for "version C" to ask if they meant "with the content still in question in or out" is not comparable. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:36, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Don't include This was already established in the previous RFC; most of those who supported version C either explicitly or implicitly supported removing the content that was tagged as "dubious" therein. Moreover, Ives and Siniawer both dispute the "Buddhist etymology" nonsense in question, something that has been repeatedly pointed out on this talk page, so So far, no contrary scholarship has been found disagreeing with the Buddhist etymology and Shintoist significance of mottainai is an outright lie. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:25, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
  • @Nishidani, HAL333, Ryk72, and Marcocapelle: What do all of you make of this? (Not ping SMcCandlish, who already said above that he didn't want to get mired in this again.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:25, 3 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include. This is an article that is available at libraries internationally which is specifically about this word. I can see only the abstract, but I take it that the the library version is a full length research article. I don't see an argument for not including it. Colin Gerhard (talk) 12:47, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

@Colin Gerhard: Would you mind reading the other content in the article, if not the rest of the discussion on this talk page? The "Buddhist origin" stuff in question is clearly fringe nationalist malarkey, and is treated as such by both Ives (writing 18 years before Sato) and Siniawer (writing three years before and then again one year after). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:56, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

It's not a research article. And it's not specifically about the word Mottainai. It's a conference paper, about Japanese perspectives on Anima Mundi; from a conference of Jungian Psychologists on Anima Mundi in Transition. Conference proceedings available here [4]. A good summary of Jungian thought on Anima Mundi (World Spirit or World Soul) as it relates to that conference available here [5]. - Ryk72 ^talk 13:18, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

• Include These are indisputable facts from a reliable source, and the tagging was factually-impaired original research. The first tag just goes on about how generic, non-specialist sources on Buddhism don't mention it, but that's not the point! The specialized sources do mention it. It would be completely unacceptable to not include this. Citing Yuriko Sato is fine, but even better yet could be citing Yuko Kawanishi, sociologist at Tokyo Gakugei University.[6] IvoryTower123 (talk) 20:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

...that's what you said about Taylor. (Note also that IvoryTower123 was inappropriately canvassed by the OP.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:40, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

BTW, IvoryTower123, you are explicitly violating the close of the previous RFC by continuously accusing me of "factually-impaired original research": the relevant wording is Participants were asked to use their editorial discretion to determine how sources should be weighed in order to describe the etymology of the article topic. Since this bogus and offensive accusation was also recently made by the OP at least three times here, I would also ask him to refrain from this repeated personal attack. If these accusations do not cease, I will request that those making them be blocked. I see at least eight other places on this page where the claim was made by Francis Schonken, Krow730, Levivich, and the above two editors; I will not demand an apology now that an admin closer has explicitly pointed them to Wikipedia:Editorial discretion#Editorial Discretion is not Original Research, but the editors who have continued to do so despite multiple warnings need to be sanctioned if they continue after this point. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:33, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

That's not true. You were the one who inappropriately canvassed only the people who you expected to support your position. Martinthewriter just called the ones left out of your canvassing. Anyway, I was already participating in this discussion and knew what was going on in the talk page, so it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The tags you inserted are creative attempts to debunk the scholarly consensus, and, as I already explained, they do constitute original research. IvoryTower123 (talk) 19:22, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

No, he didn't; he didn't notify Phoenix7777 (talk · contribs), Imaginatorium (talk · contribs) or Levivich (talk · contribs), but rather only canvassed the ones who would no doubt be disappointed that version A had been rejected by the previous RFC; then, unsurprisingly, a bunch of you showed up and voted for restoring version A. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Sorry, I actually forgot to address this: your initial !vote above claims of my tag's Neither the Princeton "Dictionary of Buddhism" nor the Routledge "Encyclopedia of Buddhism" include entries on this "Buddhist term" that The first tag just goes on about how generic, non-specialist sources on Buddhism don't mention it, but that's not the point! The specialized sources do mention it. -- how are either of these sources "generic" or "non-specialist"? Both of them are far more relevant and specialist than an article on clinical psychology! It's the specialized sources that don't mention it, while generic, mass-market fluff like ... well, virtually every source cited in this article prior to 2018, and some scholarly works in unrelated fields (like Taylor's article, which unapologetically took information from Wikipedia, a fact you are still denying), make sweeping claims about "Buddhism" and "Shinto" and "Japanese uniqueness". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:07, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

• support inclusion - Most of the other sources in this article are non-specialist or give non-substantial coverage to mottainai. I concur that Yuriko Sato's article is indeed the best source we have. It stands out for giving substantial coverage and being published in a highly reputable journal. Certainly, I see no need for the tags. Krow750 (talk) 07:39, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

The above is a bad-faith comment from someone who followed me here from ANI. Moreover, he clearly does not read Japanese, and therefore could not have read "most of the other sources". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:27, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Comment

Apparently people commenting here have minus zero knowledge of Japan and context. Witness this extraordinary assertion.

Yuriko Sato's article is an excellent peer-reviewed work of specialist scholarship on the Japanese concept of mottainai.

Laughable.

• (a) it is not peer-reviewed
• (b) there is no trace of it being a 'work of specialist scholarship'. To the contrary

Its authoress is a clinical psychotherapist talking wholly outside her field of competence.

There is no trace of scholarship in its sources, seven of which are named. These consist of generic refs to Jung and Jungian psychologists (Hayao Kawai, McGuire, Hull etc.) in works totally unrelated to the mottainai argument, and a snippet from a memoir by a certain Imura Kazukiyo having nothing to do with it either. There's one (pseudo)-academic source, Umehara Takeshi's 'Shizen-saigai to ningen no bunmei,' from 2012. Umehara was an extremely prolific nihonjinron propagandist, with no serious academic work to his credit (I've read over 10 volumes by him dutifully, (I knew him personally) and only found his 'The Structure of Laughter' (いの構造) mildly interesting).

One glance at Sato's paper shows she's totally out of her depth, trotting out absurd generalizations from a zero data base.

But, hey, this is Wikipedia, the social network where one can pretend to be a notch up from the usual mindless garrulousness of social media generally, while maintaining the latter's practice of letting everyone have an uninformed say about what they know nothing about, except in terms of reacting to what other people equally uninformed may 'opine'.

After the Fukushima nuclear explosion, it was thought mottainai to have young technicians risk their health - it would be a blight on the future - in cleaning up the radioactive waste. So some bright guy got 300 old folk to volunteer to do the work: they were old and would die/waste away anyway so it was not mottainai to have them get cancer while bucketing deadly soil, while, in sacrificing themselves, they would exemplify the principle of mottainai as applied to the younger generation, not wasting the country's youth.

Mottainai is nothing more than a fashionable post 2005 slogan 'resurrected in cultural rhetoric,'(Kevin Taylor, 'Mottainai: A Philosophy of Waste from Japan,') after an African passing through Tokyo heard it and fussed unwarily over its putative untranslatable 'uniqueness', a remark which got a few local ideologists excited about their newly discovered inimitable ecological ethos.

If the Kenyan in question had landed in Edinjburgh in 2005 and heard a local mumble the proverb'willful waste makes woeful want', then marveled over the traditional unique Scottish ethic of not wasting anything (Scottish parsimony), no doubt a Scots nationalist could pick this up, and descant on its earlier theological basis as illustrated in the even earlier aphorism 'want is next to waste, and shame doth synne ensue', and in the even earlier Talmudic concern for Bal tashchit that arose from glosses on the passage in Deuteronomy 20:19–20. Then someone would write a popular book saying that the Western notion of not wasting anything (while actually laying waste to the world's resources) is deeply embedded in the Judeo-Christian Weltanaschauung, and that non-Christian nations should pick up this ancient wisdom re waste and adopt it globally. This to explain to outsiders the little cultural game being played in these silly rewritings , in the present case, of Japan's past. And, as in many other areas, wikipedians, with the best of intentions, are helping to enculturate as an encyclopedic fact what is just a passing verbal trend in some little known discursive world. Understandable, but, well, sigh.Nishidani (talk) 12:48, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Forgot to copy and paste in the following note.

Yuriko's article 'the best source we have'(!!!!) is so poorly done that she even gets a simple citation wrong. See attributes David Kestenbaum's review ‘Mottainai grandma reminds Japan, ‘Don’t waste’.’ NPR 8 October 2007,- a review of Mariko Shinju's Mottainai Grandma - to a certain Yuko Kawanishi, when the latter is only quoted in that review. Superb scholarship indeed.Nishidani (talk) 13:06, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• Exclude - Not a reliable source; does not meet WP:SCHOLARSHIP. The specific viewpoint that mottainai originated as a Buddhist term (emphasis added) is not well supported in reliable sources; though the related, but distinct, viewpoint mottainai originated from mottai, which has a Buddhist referent, often expressed as mottainai originated from a Buddhist term may be. In this RfC, however, we are asked about this specific text, and about this specific source.

Issues with the particular source proposed:

Publication - The source is a conference paper which was originally presented at the Twentieth Congress of the International Association for Analytical Psychology, a conference for Jungian Psychologists on Anima Mundi in Transition. The proceedings are available on Google Books.[7] It is true that the paper was later included in the Journal of Analytical Psychology (vol 62, issue 1)[8][9], and that the JoAP is normally peer-reviewed.[10] That issue of the journal is, however, explicitly a collection of papers from that conference - reproduced verbatim.[11] No peer-review was done. The JoAP is, moreover, a publication focused on Jungian Psychology, and even if a peer-review had been undertaken, it would have been from that perspective; not from a perspective of or a focus on the etymology or history of the term, mottainai. It would be more accurate to describe the paper as having been (re-)printed in the JoAP, rather than published (as that term is meant in academic circles).
Author - Sato Yuriko is a clinical psychotherapist; and is, respectfully, when discussing etymology, outside her field. This has already been mentioned on this Talk page multiple times; but is yet to be rebutted, refuted, or addressed in any form.
Paper - In alignment with the conference at which the paper was presented, and the publication in which it was later printed, it focuses on anima mundi and Jungian psychology. The bulk of the paper consists of anecdotes from Sato’s clinical practice, largely about patients reconnecting with the spirit of nature. It asserts a history of the term mottainai, but is not a work which examines or studies the term, its history & etymology in any way. The paper has been cited once - in a thesis for a Master of Fine Arts.
Text - The proposed text, "According to Yuriko Sato, mottainai originated as a Buddhist term, though this fact is not common knowledge even in Japan. The word later become connected to the Shinto concept that all objects have souls.”, is problematic in that, while attributing the clause (mottainai originated as a Buddhist term) it thereafter returns to asserting the remainder in Wikipedia’s voice, as fact. Were the issues of reliability, publication &c not present, it might be possible to support some text; but not this, as is. - Ryk72 ^talk 14:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

• What is the evidence that this is not peer-reviewed? The nature of the paper is clearly called out in both the article's page at Wiley Online, First presented at the IAAP Congress, Kyoto, Japan, 28 August 2016 ‐ 2 September 2016.[12], and in the Table of Contents for the issue of the JoAP in which it was included, where it is listed under the subheading: Papers first presented at the International Association for Analytical Psychology (IAAP) XX International Congress for Analytical Psychology, Kyoto, Japan, 28 August - 2 September 2016: Anima Mundi in Transition: Cultural, Clinical and Professional Challenges.[13] Editors with access to the version of the paper at Wiley Online will be able to verify that it is the same as that published in the Conference Proceedings for that conference.[14] Those proceedings also detail the editorial processes through which the papers went prior to presentation; these did not include "peer-review". If the paper as included in the JoAP, where it is explicitly identified as a conference paper, is the same as that in the conference proceedings, then no peer-review was performed by the JoAP. But neither would we expect a peer-review to have been done; conference papers are not peer-reviewed. Additionally, a lack of peer-review is a sufficient objection to inclusion; but not a necessary, nor the only, objection. - Ryk72 ^talk 01:54, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
• All roads lead to Kawanishi Kestenbaum (TLDR: NPR segment featuring Kawanishi Yuko is not reliable for this content; anything based on it is not reliable for this content - including Sato & Taylor, and Hartman (mentioned below)). On review of the Sato Yuriko, Kevin Taylor & Laura Hartman sources presented as supporting the proposed text, I find that they cite “Kawanishi 2007”, an NPR segment which included comments on mottainai by Kawanishi Yuko, a sociologist at Tokyo Gakugei University who specialises in mental health. Taylor explicitly including the URL. Neither of these sources provide other citations in support of their text regarding mottainai & Buddhism/Shinto; nor do they provide evidence of independent research or study - (that's ok, they're not research papers). The reliability of those sources can be, therefore, no greater than that of the NPR segment. The NPR summary of the segment (as linked by Taylor) does include the text, Mottainai is an old Buddhist word. Kawanishi says it also ties in with the Shinto idea that objects have souls.[15] On review of the transcript of the NPR show, and of the audio, the person who makes these statements is not actually Kawanishi Yuko, but is David Kestenbaum, the NPR reporter.[16] From the audio, and the difference in background noise, it is also clear that the statements which were made by Kawanishi (and which do not directly support the Buddhism/Shinto text) were recorded at a different time and location from those made by Kestenbaum. Even if we were to assume that Kawanishi is an expert on etymology (I do not so assume), and that comments or quotes from a radio segment are reliable (I do not so assume), we would not assume that an introductory or linking statement by the presenter of the segment has the same degree of reliability. - Ryk72 ^talk 12:56, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
• Regarding the sources mentioned; examined in light of the specific etymological claim that is the subject of this RfC: that mottainai originated as a Buddhist term:

Kestenbaum (NPR Radio); called “Kawanishi” [17] - is not Kawanishi Yuko, but David Kestenbaum, NPR Radio Presenter, as discussed above; not reliable for this claim

Sato - references Kestenbaum; discussed above; not reliable for this claim

Hartman [18] - references Kestenbaum; discusses a conceptual link; does not make the specific etymological claim

Taylor [19] - references Kestenbaum; discusses a conceptual link; does not make the specific etymological claim

Omori & Mutua [20] - discusses a conceptual link; references Yoshimura T 2011: The term Mottainai originates from a Japanese Buddhist belief of Mottai-Nai, which means that the intrinsic dignity in the material entity (Mottai) becomes empty or absent (Nai) (Yoshimura, 2011). - "belief" is not "term", "originates from" is not "originated as". Is this the specific etymological claim or not?!; references Olejarz: Today, Mottainai is used to refer to waist (sic) resulting from the improper use of things according to their intrinsic value (Olejarz, 2011). - this is not the specific etymological claim

Yoshimura Tadayoshi 2011, Department of Chemistry and Biology Engineering, Fukui National College of Technology [21] - referenced by Omori & Mutua - もったいない(勿体無い)とは、仏教用語で勿体を「物体」と書き、それを否定する言葉である。 (Google Translate notwithstanding,) "Mottai" is the Buddhist term here; does not make the specific claim attributed to him by Omori & Mutua; does not make the specific etymological claim.

Olejarz - unavailable; referenced by Omori & Mutua, but not for the specific etymological claim

Yamaori - unavailable; referenced by Siniawer, but not for the specific etymological claim

Crossley-Baxter (BBC Travel) [22] - Travel story; primarily discusses a conceptual link; discusses etymology, as attributed to Nanai Tatsuo, Executive Director of the MOTTAINAI Campaign, thus: Mottai comes from the Buddhist word that refers to the essence of things. It can be applied to everything in our physical world, showing that objects don’t exist in isolation but are connected to one another” Nanai said, adding that, “‘-nai’ is a negation, so ‘mottainai’ becomes an expression of sadness over the loss of the link between two entities, living and non-living. “Mottai” is the Buddhist term here; does not make the specific etymological claim.

and some additions...

Taylor (ABC Radio), the same Kevin Taylor as above [23] - discusses conceptual links; etymology only as much as this: Despite the pop culture applications, the word itself is said to have origins in Buddhist philosophy and religious syncretism.; does not make the specific etymological claim.

Kinefuchi Etsuko in The Rhetorical Legacy of Wangari Maathai: Planting the Future (edited by Eddah M. Mutua, Alberto González, Anke Wolbert), the same Mutua as above [24] - discuses the etymology thus: Mottainai is a compound word that consists of Mottai (勿体) and nai (ない). ... Mottai (勿体) is said to have its origin in Buddhism. ... “Mottai” is the Buddhist term here; does not make the specific etymological claim.

Siniawer Etsuko Maruko in Waste, Consuming Postwar Japan, Chapter 9, WE ARE ALL WASTE CONSCIOUS NOW [25] - discusses the changing conceptualisations of mottainai extensively; discusses etymology in so far as: Mottainai in its postwar incarnation expressed attention to wastefulness, though the word has a long linguistic history of many and various definitions ...; discusses conceptual links to Buddhism as part of a conscious, 21st century, "rebranding" of Mottainai; does not make the specific etymological claim.

Govt of Japan Public Relations Office [26][27] “THE word mottainai comes from a Buddhist term mottai, which means ‘undue importance,’ along with the word nai, which denotes negation,” says Tatsuo Nanai, the MOTTAINAI Campaign’s chief of secretariat. "Mottai" is the Buddhist term here; does not make the specific etymological claim.

On examination, these sources do not broadly support the specific content that is the subject of this RfC. Most of them do not discuss etymology, and those which do support an alternative claim. - Ryk72 ^talk 22:54, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

• YES INCLUDE - It's from a peer-reviewed journal, the Journal of Analytical Psychology, and it is a solid source of information. What is the evidence that this is not peer-reviewed? It says on their website that it is peer-reviewed.[28] I have access to a copy of the article and I can't imagine a good reason to not use this, unless the point is to make the article misleading and lopsided. Yuriko Sato's ideas are clearly not nationalist unless every academic who has worked on the subject is also nationalist. Specialist or otherwise, they all say the same thing. Hko2333 (talk) 18:59, 4 March 2020 (UTC)​

I have access to a copy of the article and I can't imagine a good reason to not use this, unless the point is to make the article misleading and lopsided. Umm ... you are aware that the content in question was written specifically to push a narrative that has already been demonstrated to be completely bogus, right? Having the content in make it misleading and lopsided.

Yuriko Sato's ideas are clearly not nationalist unless every academic who has worked on the subject is also nationalist. What about Siniawer? Ives? Robert Buswell? Don Lopez? Heck, Lopez is married to professor of history and comparative literature with a focus on religious studies, who is also a Japanese ex-pat (which is apparently Sato's only qualification to talk about mottainai to a lay audience of non-Japanese speakers), and presumably while he was working on the massive project of compiling the Princeton Dictionary, if she noticed he was leaving out the core concept of Japanese Buddhism that is mottainai she would have told him! And while I wouldn't consider him a "specialist", given how much that word has been cheapened in this discussion ... what about Hasegawa? He's a professor of philosophy, but that's "closer" to the relevant fields than clinical psychology, and his paper (unlike Sato's) also showed a grounding in the relevant fields and a thorough awareness of the primary sources, making him certainly more of a specialist than Sato.

@Hko2333: Is your definition of "specialist" that someone who has published in a journal that, under normal circumstances, would provide peer review is automatically a specialist in every field they remotely touch on?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:41, 4 March 2020 (UTC) (expanded 01:14, 5 March 2020 (UTC) )

I agree with Challenger.rebecca that the academic articles by Siniawer and Ives nowhere contradict Sato. Nor do any of the others as far as I can tell. It ought to be stressed that if we reject this information, we would be rejecting the conclusions of not just some of the scholars who have written on the subject of mottainai, but ALL of them. Incidentally, I view specialists as those who have researched this topic specifically, as opposed to more general research on Buddhism or Japanese culture. Hko2333 (talk) 06:37, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

I agree with Challenger.rebecca that the academic articles by Siniawer and Ives nowhere contradict Sato. That just means you have not read or understood either of those papers. It ought to be stressed that if we reject this information, we would be rejecting the conclusions of not just some of the scholars who have written on the subject of mottainai, but ALL of them. Bullshit. Popular media sources, and some academic literature in unrelated fields that relies on said popular media (including Wikipedia!), say that; but none of the professional scholars working in the relevant fields do. Incidentally, I view specialists as those who have researched this topic specifically, as opposed to more general research on Buddhism or Japanese culture. So... your definition of "specialist" has nothing to do with training, peer review, target audience, or overall content, but rather is based entirely on the unverifiable claim that this or that author investigated some aspect of a particular topic specifically? So if the late MYS scholar Haku Itō had decided to write a paper for a conference of literary scholars, in which he mused on the evolutionary history of human binocular vision for some reason, that would make him a "specialist" in the topic where evolutionary biologists and physical anthropologists who haven't specifically published on binocular vision are not specialists? That is insane, and if you apply that standard to your mainspace edits, you need to be blocked from editing to prevent further disruption to the encyclopedia. By that definition, Hasegawa is the only true specialist source, and he very much contradicts Sato in that he distinguishes between the modern "wasteful" meaning that might be used by environmentalists and the "original" meaning. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:01, 8 March 2020 (UTC)

• Include It was made quite clear in the previous RfC, or maybe even earlier, that there was consensus to include it. It's really important that we don't denude the article of the dominant scholarly opinion. And having read the articles by Ives andSiniawer, I agree that they do not contradict Yuriko Sato. Saying that Ives and Siniawer dispute the Buddhist word origin of mottainai is completely false, and that has already been thoroughly demonstrated elsewhere on this talk page. Challenger.rebecca (talk) 05:14, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

@Challenger.rebecca: It was made quite clear in the previous RfC, or maybe even earlier, that there was consensus to include it. Consensus in the previous RFC was for "version C" as opposed to "version A"; a simple headcount showed roughly equal support for the two, but the concerns over version C expressed by those who support version A were not as strong as those expressed by the opposing parties regarding version A. The content in question is clearly part of version A, not version C, as shown by (i) the clearly stated opinions of editors like Ryk, Nishidani and myself regarding the two two sentences in question during the previous RFC and (ii) the fact that virtually everyone who supported version A now supports this, while virtually everyone who opposed version A now opposes this.

You have a history of showing poor judgement of community consensus (even allowing an article that contained obvious OR and POV content to be a GA-class article), and your involvement in this page appears to be motivated by my having called you out on that (it was a long time ago, but for you it's less than 500 edits -- difficult to accept someone who edits as infrequently as you do just happening across an obscure article like this and just happening to disagree with someone you had conflicted with previously as a coincidence), but I honestly didn't expect you to immediately throw out a formal closure made by an admin like you are doing here.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:11, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

• If the viewpoint in the proposed text really is the dominant scholarly opinion, then it should be easy to list scholarly sources which support that text; which may not be subject to the same issues as Sato's conference paper. Listing, and linking, say, 5 sources would be a very easy way to resolve the dispute. But asserting that sourcing exists, without providing it, is not. - Ryk72 ^talk 01:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• Better source needed Finding out the origins of a word falls squarely under the purview of linguistics. What we need here is not a psychology source, but to find a Japanese etymology book, or at the very least a mainstream scolar of Japanese linguistics that can confirm its etymlogy. Surely nobody here would use a linguistics source to explain a psychological concept, right?--Megaman en m (talk) 08:44, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include without tagging: Per IvoryTower123. This is only one of many sources we could cite for the proposed text. It may not be the only theory, but it's obviously a legitimate perspective. Patiodweller (talk) 15:03, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

You know, it's getting increasingly suspicious that every single person supporting inclusion of this text is someone with a history with me. Why does someone whose project-space history consists almost exclusively of defending and block-voting with ARS[29] mysteriously show up and disagree with one of ARS's most outspoken critics? This kind of disruptive behaviour is a very powerful argument for shutting the project down... (Ctrl+F this page for Now, if the Article Rescue Squadron is being abused to sway consensus on project-side content discussions, such as Hijiri's SPI MFD, it's being used against its purpose and against WP:CANVASS, and the editors involved should face sanctions.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:02, 5 March 2020 (UTC)

No, I saw it listed on Wikiproject Japan article alerts, not from the ARS. Patiodweller (talk) 00:42, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

I don't believe that. Out of 327 edits, only six[30][31][32][33][34][35] appear to be remotely related to Japan, of which two are not covered by WP:JAPAN, five (including both of the aforementioned two) are minor copyedits that look to be semi-automated, like you were clicking through random articles and making the same type of edits to all of them (you used the "mechanics/grammar" edit summary 291 times). The other one was an RM (which you could have come across by any number of ways) where you were number of a number of non-Japan-focused editors who !voted one way where the majority of Japan-focused editors !voted the other way. Conversely, one of the "ringleaders" of ARS has proven he has no quibbles about canvassing off-wiki and even canvassing other editors specifically to come after me off-wiki, while another's "thanks log" clearly shows that they have been following my edits very closely for the last year or so, and a third actually showed up almost immediately to !vote in the previous RFC on this page. Moreover, the sheer silliness of what you wrote (citing someone who's likely to be blocked sometime in the next week for the counter-policy nature of what he posted twice in this RFC) makes it seem really unlikely you came here, analysed what our article said, analysed its sources, and decided that among the two mutually-exclusive "theories" on the matter the one supported by only one so-called "peer-reviewed" source, written by someone with a completely different field of expertise, was the stronger; more likely, you came here because of the on-wiki agenda that you advertise yourself as holding on your own user page. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:27, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• If Sato Yuriko's conference paper is indeed only one of many sources we could cite for the proposed text, then it should be easy to list some of the other sources; which may not be subject to the same issues. Listing, and linking, say, 5 sources would be a very easy way to resolve the dispute. But asserting that sourcing exists, without providing it, is not. - Ryk72 ^talk 01:37, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Moreover, efforts to locate such sources have been ongoing for at least four months at this point. (Actually given that the content restored in November was lifted word-for-word from what was removed in February 2018, it was probably more like two years.) Sato is just the last one left because (i) she didn't obviously just copy her information from Wikipedia (like Taylor), (ii) she isn't necessarily being misrepresented as supporting a view she disagrees with (like Siniawer), and (iii) for a long time it was the most difficult of the sources to access (to paraphrase Ancient Aliens Debunked, [Sato] was the last hope for a real one, and the only reason it was the last hope is because [it was behind a paywall], refus[ing] to have an official study done to see if it was [reliable] or not[36]). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:52, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

• Exclude: This is not a useful reference. We already know (from Kojien) that the root mottai has a Buddhist referent. But we also know that the word mottainai has quite diverse meanings, one of which is simply a reference to waste. The etymological fallacy is the false inference that because a word has some particular origin it means that speakers using it are "really" talking about some mystic-religious somethingorother. Why do we need Sato? Is it just to add Shinto into the mix of supposed religious connections? She is a Jungian, so sees the world in terms of Jungian preconceptions, so Buddhism = Anima mundi = Shinto, only one more step to the Bogeyman. I found a self description here, which seems very genuine, but she says "I am Japanese, ... My family was not particularly religious, but as is natural in Japan, especially in Kyoto, I grew up in the culture of Buddhism and Shintoism." Hmm. In my Atlas of World Religion (O'Brien and Palmer, 1993), it is actually a uniquely Japanese achievement to have a national total religious affiliation exceeding 100%. And in Kyoto, as she forgets to mention, they have uniquely Japanese vegetables, didn't you know? Imaginatorium (talk) 19:34, 5 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include based on Google Books and Scholar search. It doesn't seem problematic. Laura Hartman in Grounding Religion: A Field Guide to the Study of Religion and Ecology says "Mottainai is a Buddhist concept that also draws on the Shinto reverence for objects". Kikuko Omori and Eddah Mutua say in the article A Cross-Cultural Approach to Environmental and Peace Work that "The term Mottainai originates from a Japanese Buddhist belief". The article Contexts of the Mottainai Concept by SM Olejarz says, "Mottainai is rooted in Shinto tradition". Funtoedit1212 (talk) 07:14, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@Funtoedit1212: Do you not see how sources claiming it "originates in Shinto" and "originates in Buddhism" contradict each other, and that the latter group, including Sato, are in turn contradicted by both (i) the specialist etymological sources already in the article that say it originated as a slang term and had nothing to do with wastefulness or environmentalism until later (which sources also contradict the former group) and (ii) the specialist Buddhology sources that say lamenting a waste of material goods (loss) is counter to almost all the core tenets of Buddhism?

Additionally, of the three mutually contradictory sources you cite:

• the first was written by three people who almost certainly don't speak Japanese[37][38][39] and so were reliant on others for the relevant research (or, given what came out during the last RFC, maybe even got their information from our article!);
• the second was printed in a journal in the entirely unrelated field of "peace, conflict, and social justice issues"[40] and was written by two communication scholars one of whom almost certainly doesn't speak Japanese[41] and the other of whom probably does but is not a specialist in any of the relevant fields[42];
• the third was published in the renowned linguistics journal Current Problems of Psychiatry[43] and was written by a human ecology specialist[44] who ... actually did apparently teach elementary Japanese at some point[45] but that would not qualify her to write about the origins of medieval Japanese words (however, she seems to be explicitly talking about the concept of Japanese aversion to wastefulness, not about etymology of the word, meaning the source is completely irrelevant to the present discussion).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:24, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

None of your sources are linguistic ones. We need a historical linguist specializing in Japanese that talks about the etymology of this word.--Megaman en m (talk) 10:17, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

@Megaman en m: FWIW, we already kinda have one. "Japanese language and literature" is often lumped together as a single large discipline in academia here (I'm sure your're more open-minded about this stuff than bad-faith editors like Ivorytower123, but if you need proof with a reliable source I can find it -- in the meantime, please make do with the fact that it's the title of several of the more reputable Japanese peer-reviewed journals[46]), and while Noma (indirectly cited in the article) was a specialist in the classical literature of the Edo period, that's a lot closer to historical linguistics than anyone else who has been cited. (Kōjien and Ōbunsha are both widely-used dictionaries, the former of contemporary Japanese but including the rare etymological note and the latter of classical Japanese.) Unfortunately, Noma himself is not the source (he was apparently interviewed by the economist Yasukazu Takenaka, whose paper was later cited by Hasegawa (the main source for much of our current article), a philosopher by training but who wrote widely on language, literature, etc. (in the 1940s he apparently wrote a book about evolutionary science for children!) and published a dictionary of proverbs toward the end of his life. Thing is, while these sources are not ideal, and some of them present different information, they generally don't contradict each other or the basic facts laid out in Kōjien.

Sato and any other source claiming that the etymology of the word mottainai demonstrates a direct link between Buddhism and environmentalism are all contradicted by most of these somewhat superior sources, in that the latter all distinguish between the "wasteful" sense and the earlier sense that had nothing to do with wastefulness, let alone environmentalism. Nihonjinron also plays a big part in the matter, of course: Siniawer 2014 and 2018 go into some detail on how a lot of literature being published by scholars in Japan, virtually all of them working in unrelated fields, on "mottainai" in the 2000s is ... questionable. Per Ives (who was writing before the recent "mottainai boom"), this actually goes back to at least the 1930s, when one Buddhist nationalist tried to endear Buddhism to the fascists who controlled Japan at the time by claiming that aversion to "wastefulness" (mottainai) was a trait characteristic of the Japanese race.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:01, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

No we should not. It's from an article that was written by an analytical psychologist, which in itself might be OK; but is published in a journal of analytical psychology, which is not OK, as we can't expect that the peer review process (if there even was one worth the name) involved any philologist. (And I doubt that there was much of one: the article looks very dodgy in philology-irrelevant ways -- not wanting to embarrass the author, I'd prefer not to describe these.)

But to limit ourselves to what she says about the word ... let's just look at one, rather unremarkable sentence: "In the worldview within which Mottainai! is uttered, there is no division between human and nature, or between living beings and inanimate objects" (pp 147–148). Mrs Hoary happens to be the one, L1 Japanese speaking, occasional user of the word (and of its antonym, mottaiburu) that I know best. She has a pretty clear idea of the divisions between human and (however it's understood) nature, and a very clear idea of that between living beings and inanimate objects (probably with some fuzziness around the status of coral, lichen and so forth). As do her friends, and as, I'd guess, do most people I converse with. I'm willing to be persuaded that Mrs Hoary is an insignificant outlier, but Sato doesn't start to provide evidence for what she asserts.

Or again: "Teaching the mottainai spirit to children is not seen by parents as a religious teaching but in fact it plays an important role in developing religious awareness" (p 148), an assertion sourced to "[t]he Japanese Jungian analyst Hayao Kawai". Mrs Hoary was definitely taught by her parents not to be wasteful, and I suppose you could choose to phrase that as "taught the mottainai spirit by her parents". She has a "religious awareness" in that she's aware of religions (just as she's aware of global heating, of Covid-19, of Trump, of Abe, of Bosch, of Banksy, etc etc); but if what's meant is that she subscribes to one or more religions (even subconsciously), then all I can say is that I haven't noticed it.

As for what's written about the relationship between the word mottainai (or "the mottainai spirit"?) and Shintō, zero evidence is presented, just an approving citation of this news article/transcript by David Kestenbaum (or as Sato calls him, "Kawanishi, Y"), in which "Yuko Kawanishi, a sociologist at Tokyo Gakugei University" "says [the word mottainai] also ties in with the Shinto idea that objects have souls".

Simply, the primary meaning of mottainai is, depending on context, "wasteful", "unconscionable", "That's wasteful!", "What a waste!", or similar. Despite being a formula, its utterance is often beneficial. Its history shows polysemy and semantic shift, as does the history of very many words. (The noun bully used to be a term of endearment. I and now you happen to know this whereas most L1 speakers of English don't. Nevertheless, they and I and probably you use the word in ways that differ imperceptibly, if at all; and none of this affects our more or less shared concept of bullying.) To hold that any history it might have should influence its "proper" or "authentic" meaning, or should colour its use by people who aren't consciously aware of the history, merely demonstrates the etymological fallacy.

Though in the context of analytical psychology (a very rickety edifice about which my views are close to Mrund's), what Sato writes doesn't surprise me. -- Hoary (talk) 00:31, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
The odd typo "apparatus" corrected to the intended "edifice": Hoary (talk) 08:46, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

That. All of that. (Actually, I'm not married; I do, however, know hundreds of Japanese L1 speakers, and I'm in contact with several dozen of them on a daily basis.) I'm especially thankful that someone other than me went ahead and said not wanting to embarrass the author, I'd prefer not to describe these -- I don't feel comfortable writing the kind of things Nishidani wrote further up this thread, and I'm pretty sure Martinthewriter (and several other editors with a bone to pick -- actually virtually everyone who is supporting the present proposal), knowing this, decided to take advantage of this Achilles' heel of mine, and were hoping that by presenting this as "Wikipedian fights against peer-reviewed scholar" they could dupe a peanut gallery into supporting a proposal that, on an even remotely critical examination, is an absurd violation of our core content policies. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:41, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Yes, while agreeing with much of Nishidani's judgement on the value of what's written, I'm a bit stunned to see his use above for people of (i) "authoress" (which to me suggests a minor author for whom special allowances should be made), (ii) "the Kenyan in question" (for Wangari Maathai, a Nobel Peace Prize winner), and (iii) "a certain Yuko Kawanishi" (for this Yuko Kawanishi, unless I'm much mistaken). None is rude, but all three sound more or less dismissive. Let's try to remain polite about people. -- Hoary (talk) 09:14, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for that: it is uncommonly perceptive in looking beyond, or within, the actual text I wrote to tease out bias. One exemplum can be random, two exempla permit a provisory inference, while three from a short tract allow one to make a judicious suggestion that might well niggle a nerve.

It's not for me to defend myself against the idea I might have a strand of male-chauvinist porker in the woof of my mental grid. A lot of things that escape self-awareness stand out like the proverbial dog's knackers to external observers . As to your points, for what it counts,

authoress. I admit my linguistic tact(lessness)(Sprachgefühl/Sprachgefool) bridles at the modern trend for gender-remodeling of languages - the mayor(ess) of Rome insists that she be called sindaca not sindaco,(so analista which is gender-neutral but with a 'feminine' a, would oblige the logical to call male analysts analisto unless one went for the equally ugly politically correct neologism analistessa, etc.,etc., )- if a distinction exists condoned by historical usage, if an innovative gender-specific term succeeds in rooting itself into natural idiom, I tend to use it. Hermione Lee in her bio of Virginia Woolf (1997:752) - no minor writer - cites the coroner's report of her death as referring to her as 'Adeline Virginia Woolf, authoress, wife of Leonard Sidney Woolf.' That was back in 1941. I don't think that was a put-down. I don't think Oscar Wilde was cocking a snook at Sappho - the greatest lyric genius, all sexes included, of antiquity- by referring to her as a 'poetess' (OW, Collected Works, 1925 vol.12 p.401)

川西結子 has a doctorate in sociology, as do several thousand people in Japan and the US. Doctorates lend those they are bestowed on a certain authority in the field, not outside of it.

The same goes for Wangari Maathai, with the rider that the point was one of cultural distance. Japan and the West have had centuries of intense cultural interpenetration. I said 'Kenyan', which is not gender-specific. But, more appropriately, I didn't pick the three: they were sources raised by others. Had I picked them from a larger field, your illation would have, for me, more cogency.

Now I'll spend the afternoon wondering whether the seeds of some latent chauvinism go back beyond that time when, aged 11, I noted a not too pretty elder cousin in a nearby house celebrating, with many girlfriends, her birthday. I scrounged up some money from my piggy bank, went and brought her a present, and presented myself, the only male around, as the girls danced together in her room. When I knocked and entered and handed her a hairbrush (she had unkempt locks) with 'Happy Birthday', she and all of her companions burst out laughing and made fun of what I thought was my thoughtfulness. Nishidani (talk) 15:24, 7 March 2020 (UTC)

Just to be clear, I wasn't talking about that stuff so much as the thorough breakdown of everything wrong with her article.

I don't come in contact with clinical psychologists a lot at the academic conferences on Japanese language and literature I do attend, but I'm very much aware of how much of an "outsider" I, as a professional translator who primarily works with modern Japanese websites and the like, am there, and so I am often very much afraid to "call the kettle black", so to speak, in on-wiki situations like this where I know a published author is wrong but I myself am technically less of a published author (even if my credentials in the relevant field are far more readily apparent). To give a recent and relevant example, I was extremely careful when it came to speculating whether a certain author previously cited in this discussion had gotten his information from Wikipedia, just because I know that in real life such an assertion cause offense, and being certain based on my own research that that was the case would be equivalent to proving a negative ("no source other than Wikipedia ever made this claim prior to 2008") -- it wasn't until I emailed him and he told me himself that he was unsure where he had found it that I became more confident proclaiming that the information had almost certainly been taken from Wikipedia.

My reply to Hoary above was meant to say It's good that someone other than me has now said that -- I now no longer need to feel afraid to do so.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:16, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

• Comment So, once again, after two weeks the discussion has largely cooled down, with minimal new voices chiming in during the initial "active" period of the RFC. We have six editors, three of whom were not involved in the last RFC, opposing the inclusion of the material, and eight users, four of whom were not previously involved, supporting the inclusion. Of the former group, the smallest edit count is Imaginatorium with a little over 6,000, and all were active in 2015 or earlier -- all are established Wikipedians with a history of both positive and negative interactions with the previous parties; meanwhile, of the latter group, the highest edit count is less than 800, and only two of the accounts were in use before 2018, and many of them appear to have off-wiki canvassing and/or sockpuppetry issues (which would explain how a large block of relatively new accounts suddenly show up and !vote en masse in an RFC when every single one of the experienced Wikipedians go the other way). Additionally, all eight have basically repeated the same, already-discredited, points regarding supposed peer-review and context-free "reliability" and failed to respond to queries regarding rationale (some of them several times, as I reached out to several of them on their talk pages in the hopes of getting a response). It seems obvious how any uninvolved, experienced closer would view this situation at present; if there are no objections, should we just take this to ANRFC now? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:17, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

• No objection from me. (But do try to be concise when asking over there.) -- Hoary (talk) 08:44, 17 March 2020 (UTC)

Done. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:48, 18 March 2020 (UTC)

• Note to closer There was another RFC that took place further up this page between 14 November and 2 March. The consensus was in favour of "version C" as opposed to "version A". All but one of the editors who supported version C considered the content under discussion in this RFC to be part of version A and not part of version C (said one editor was not a dissenter, but rather failed to return to clarify his position). After the RFC closed, the OP of the first RFC immediately started pushing the idea that the content now under discussion was part of version C and was therefore supported by the existing consensus -- a position supported by no one who !voted in the previous RFC at that time, and only retroactively supported by the editors who had supported version A in the previous RFC. (Said editor also continued to ignore a specific statement by the closer of the RFC regarding his conduct therein.[47]) Given this history, it seems highly likely that unless the close of this RFC is carefully worded, the disruptive editing and talk page WP:IDHT will continue indefinitely in one fashion or another. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:25, 19 March 2020 (UTC)

No inclusion, per Hijiri88, Ryk72, and Hoary. It has been demonstrated that psychologists are unreliable sources. CABAL APPROVED (talk) 20:45, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

@Wanguy: Please do not put words in people's mouths. No one is saying "psychologists are unreliable sources in general" -- the problem is that a small group of suspicious new editors are claiming that is particular psychologist is a reliable source in general, even when making claims about completely unrelated fields. And while we are on the subject of suspicious new accounts ... @Guywan: The abbove account claimed with its first edit to be you, and ten minutes later made its second and thusfar only other edit, seen above. For it to be a legit alt-account you should normally declare it while logged into your main account (otherwise it looks like impersonation), and it's normally not a good idea to create an alt-account specifically to post in "contentious" areas like this one.

Note for everyone else: The reason I am addressing this on the article talk page is that there has been a large amount of apparent sockpuppetry or off-wiki canvassing in this RFC, as every single editor who has !voted for inclusion has done so with a fairly new account, and a large number of such new accounts mysteriously finding their way to this RFC and all !voting the same way looks very suspicious. Against this backdrop, a new account showing up and !voting the opposite way, while putting counter-policy words in the mouths of the other editors ostensibly on his side, looks kinda a like a hatchet-job.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:08, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: It's me. Don't take that comment too seriously. My support for non-inclusion stands. —guywan (talk • contribs) 01:04, 25 March 2020 (UTC)

• Include as per Wikipedia:Neutral point of view. Wikipedia should represent all significant points of view in a balanced manner. We aren't here to push a specific POV. The large majority of the sources presented above do confirm what the Sato article claims. The BBC ran an article on this subject recently. So, yes, we are required to include it. Ahiroy (talk) 23:25, 31 March 2020 (UTC)
• Include - Excluding such a prominent theory does indeed strike me as POV-pushing, which we absolutely want to avoid on Wikipedia. The number of good sources we have for this is already so great that we could take our pick from a vast selection, so an exclusion vote can't be based on an objection to psychologists specifically. Though I don't think attribution is needed, with attribution I can't even understand how anyone could ever object to it. Worldlywise (talk) 11:37, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

Comment'. Sigh. It is not a theory. It is a philological assertion about medieval Japanese (and Chinese) made by a modern Japanese Jungian psychologist. This has been remarked on, and ignored, repeatedly. In strict wiki practice, a technical controversy requires citations from reputable specialists in the relevant discipline. Sato's assertion could only be cited were it based on a reliable philological source. She's out of her depth and what few sources she does list are, politely speaking, crummy, and would never pass peer review in any serious journal of Japanese studies.Nishidani (talk) 14:25, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

It's not the only source for this though, it's one of dozens. Another editor mentioned above that, "I was able to find a half dozen examples from scholars in less than an hour of searching." As we construct this article, we are choosing to either base it on what all the reliable sources say, or what none of the reliable sources say. Between all of them and none of them, I favor all of them. The people voting oppose are just basing their votes on a vain hope that somehow every reliable source in existence is wrong. Worldlywise (talk) 22:54, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

What exactly is "this"? Your quote about "a half dozen examples" is actually someone mentioning the etymological connection of the word mottai to Buddhism, about which there is no argument. But here you purport to be supporting a reference to Sato Yuriko's "paper", which rambles way beyond this to a supposed connection to Shintoism and "uniquely Japaneseness"; Sato is a biased (Jungian-mumbo-jumbo) and nonexpert source, since she knows nothing about philology, and is merely indulging in childhood reminiscences. Imaginatorium (talk) 02:49, 6 April 2020 (UTC)

If Sato Yuriko's conference paper is indeed one of dozens or one of a vast selection, then it should be easy to list some of the other sources; which may not be subject to the same issues. Listing, and linking, say, 5 sources would be a very easy way to resolve the dispute. But asserting that sourcing exists, without providing it, is not. - Ryk72 ^talk 23:56, 5 April 2020 (UTC)

• Exclude – The paper by Ms. Sato looks like a personal hypothesis by a non-notable person. No evidence has been provided for this etymology in other sources, especially by any professional Japanese linguists. Fringe opinions normally fail due weight for inclusion in this encyclopedia. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. — JFG ^talk 14:04, 11 April 2020 (UTC)
• Include per Martinthewriter's discussions above. Idealigic (talk) 10:15, 25 April 2020 (UTC)
• Include: The yes side is definitely making the more persuasive arguments, per Wikipedia:DUE. I agree that extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, but the proposal that mottainai has no association with Buddhism is itself a rather extraordinary claim given the preponderance of reliable sources confirming the exact opposite case. This is valuable information that cannot simply be excluded. We would be doing a disservice to our readers by censoring it. Nic T R (talk) 11:30, 22 May 2020 (UTC)

  If there are indeed a preponderance of reliable sources confirming the exact opposite case, would you care to cite a few? Haven't seen them yet, almost three months after this RfC was opened. — JFG ^talk 11:11, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

So far we have Yuriko Sato's article [addition] fine, outside of this professionals scope, the NPR article (citing experts useful testimony of native speakers) [addition] This is not a contradiction of Buddhist/Shinto origins. The quote is that "Mottainai is an old Buddhist word. Kawanishi says it also ties in with the Shinto idea", and the whole point of this debate is that an etymology is different from merely being a connected idea: There's no contradiction. The article by Hartman [update: ties back to the validity of the NPR article], the article by Omori and Mutua [update: I'm reading what's on this talk page, and there's some space for noting that accepting a 'term' is buddhist based occupies an ambiguous ground between the word so originating and sharing a similar idea with], the article by Olejarz [Update: Can't get access to it but it exists], the article by Taylor [update: huh], the article by Yamaori [please let's focus on Yamaori], the BBC news article, and others misc. articles that can be found easily through googling. So, so far we have a dozen or more outstanding (as in, could but aren't being considered) sources. The remaining question is: are there any sources that disagree? It isn't clear that there are. I haven't seen any, although they can likewise be provided. Nic T R (talk) 10:57, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

This !vote is emblematic of a number of issues with the "include" responses. The RfC poses a specific question about the inclusion of specific content, referenced to a specific source; it does not pose a generic question about inclusion of some as yet unspecified content linking the concept of Mottainai to Buddhism. The proposed content makes a very specific claim indeed - that mottainai (word) originated as a Buddhist term - that is, that the term (whole term, not part) was first used in a Buddhist context. Include responses generally conflate this question of the specific etymology of the term with a similar, but significantly different, question as to a link between the concept of Mottainai and Buddhist concepts; or even a link between the concept of Mottainai and Shinto animism. Questions of reliability aside, the sources which have been mentioned generally discuss these latter, broader, conceptual links. We cannot take sources which discuss a conceptual link and use them to support a specific etymological link. Where these sources do discuss etymology, they do not generally support the specific claim; but do support a different, albeit related, claim - that mottainai comes from mottai, which is a Buddhist term.

The response also sets up a false dichotomy / straw man. To exclude the specific etymological claim or the specific referenced source that are the subject of this RfC is not the same as suggesting that "mottainai has no association with Buddhism". Indeed, none of the "exclude' responses make an attempt to exclude other, more generic, claims; they are specifically about the actual RfC question.

Finally, the "include" responses, where they call for sources which explicitly "contradict" or "disagree" with the proposed content, misunderstand policy. Our policy requires that we represent viewpoints in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint in the published, reliable sources; not in inverse proportion to the prominence of explicit contradiction of each viewpoint. Viewpoints which are represented in a vanishing minority of reliable sources, or only in non-reliable sources, do not need to be explicitly contradicted to be excluded. In this case, the specific viewpoint in the proposed content is not well supported by the sources.

NOTE: I have compiled a review of the sources mentioned above, which can be found below my !vote; in summary, the specific etymological claim which is the subject of this RfC is not found in reliable sources. - Ryk72 ^talk 22:54, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

Look, since you made a direct reply, I do want to be clearer what I mean, without just circling the same discussion, which is certainly happening here. (And in part because a discussion is not something I particularly wanted to get over involved in, I did just want to vote based on what I saw and without sniping at other people's points. All the more-so because, being a new account to wikipedia, voting is much easier than discussion and discussion is worth less when certain other discussions [06:17, 17 March 2020] are explicitly about "how It seems obvious how any uninvolved, experienced closer would view this situation at present", with my being a new account. People, uh, do need to join wikipedia at some point, which is as good a reason as any other to assume good faith.) But, still, it's not entirely worthless, if you're actually taking the time to talk to me: So, let's look at what (also) Hijiri said back in 00:02, 15 November 2019 about a source that supposedly does dispute the claim (that I'm in favour of including). It 'disputes' it based on the whole "problematic of a pure and unchanging" Buddhist to modern mottainai connection. Follow the same link they give, and you'll see that as cited in this source, Yamaori Tetsuo (religious scholar) and many others do support a connection, simply, however not an unchanging one. The lack of support for an unchanging connection simply arises from the support of the fact that things change. This is a common issue about modern approaches contrasted with cultural authenticity. This doesn't discredit the origins of a thing, and is entirely too wide a reason to not include said origins. This is where I'm not sure that there are any sources disagreeing. (I've gone back and stated in my above comment what I think of each source, which is as far as I'm going to respond.) The 'pure and unchanging' was clearly a modifier to an established connection. Clearly, this is repeating a point that's already being made and which I'm not in the best position to make, hence, my simply voting. Although, the 'unchanging and pure' debate isn't nearly so significant a point as the fact that there are sources supporting the claim, in even the sources that are being provided to dispute the claim; It's merely what convinced me on my own voting.Nic T R (talk) 12:06, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

• Just a note to other users, if the RFC consensus here isn't yet clear, then we should wait for the RFC to be closed formally before making any unilateral changes to the article.Martinthewriter (talk) 22:37, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Implementing RfC close

This RfC was closed more than 2 months ago; over which time, the close has stood unchallenged. I will shortly be editing the article to implement the terms of the closure. - Ryk72 ^talk 00:58, 25 February 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: INQ 120 What a Waste

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 3 July 2023 and 27 July 2023. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Trexler369 (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Trexler369 (talk) 00:50, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

Vacuous text removed

Maathai worked to popularize the word mottainai in places outside Japan. Maathai learned about all the different places and cultures.

Neither sentence is remotely supported by the reference, which is extremely general and does not mention "Maathai" or "mottainai".

Imaginatorium (talk) 16:44, 19 September 2023 (UTC)