Talk:Mottainai/Archive 1

Archive 1

Archive 2

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 used the term at the United Nations as a slogan to promote environmental protection."

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)

I can also agree with this. The article should be about use of the word by environmentalists. Since Wikipedia is not a dictionary, some of the apparatus might not be needed. But basically "Don't waste things" is an environmental message, so I don't think there necessarily has to be a conflict with everyday usage. – Margin1522 (talk) 11:28, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: Have you ever seen the anime Amon Saga? That film's final scene has a use of the word that is basically the opposite of environmentalist (at least, the brand of tree-hugger "hippie" environmentalism that says exploitation by man of nature is an intrinsically bad thing; it has nothing to do with sustainability one way or the other). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:40, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Margin1522: "don't waste things" is hardly a unique Japanese concept—one could argue it's not even particularly Japanese. But mottainai doesn't translate as "don't waste things" in everyday parlance, does it? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:55, 26 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)
  • Andrew D.: Come again? All the sources supporting this are already in the article—including multiple cites from dictionaries giving us the prosaic usage as the default. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:42, 25 February 2018 (UTC)
  • Andrew D.: By the way, do you read Japanese? Just so we understand where there may be misunderstandings. Hijiri, Imiginatorium, Margin, and I do. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:44, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: I normally assume editors who don't indicate proficiency in this or that language on their user pages don't, which is why I provided my own translations here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:47, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Andrew Davidson: What claims? That this article currently makes a mess of the etymology of the word and only exists because of the word's use by non-Japanese environmentalists? Normally we don't need reliable sources to support claims about Wikipedia content that are self-evident. I'm still not even sure of the supposed religious meaning of the word; the only one I can find is something approximating "impure; profane", which is not related to the colloquial meaning of "wasteful" and has nothing to do with the "innate value of things". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:47, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

The word has been used by Japanese sources, it not just Wangari Maathai and other environmentalists. The Japanese woman that wrote Mottainai Grandma for instance. [3] Dream Focus 14:54, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Yeah, of course it has. It's a common Japanese word that means "wasteful". And have you read Mottainai Grandma? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:23, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• Japan's Prime Minister spoke about the word. [4] Odd that the Prime Minister of that Japan, various news sources in that country, and a bestselling writer from there all say the concept Mottainai is a real thing, but a couple of Wikipedia editors who claim to experts on everything Japanese insist it isn't. Dream Focus 15:53, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: You're reading those sources in light of your own flawed preconceptions. No one who actually spoke Japanese and had attended more than a few internationally-oriented speeches by Japanese politicians about "Japanese traditions" would interpret the sources the way you are doing. No one is saying that the "concept" of mottainasa "doesn't exist". (As an aside, please stop using mottainai as a noun if you are going to talk about it in the context of traditional Japan; mottainai is an adjective.) Please refrain from talking about other editors like you do in your last 15 words, as you were already suggested not to a few days ago on RSN. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:19, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Dream Focus: of course the prime minister used it—the government has been using the term to promote environmentalism. But when I do a search for "安倍晋三 もったいない" ("Abe Shinzō mottainai"), almost none of the results use the word in the context of environmentalism—it's used almost always in the way that we (and the dictionaries cited) have been telling you.

If you're going to stick to English-language sources, then you have to stick to English-language sources—in which mottainai is an environmentalist slogan. To do otherwise is irresponsible.

By the way, why do you reject the dictionary sources given that give preference to the prosaic meanings of the word (often exclusively)? Japanese—Japanese dictionaries do the same. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:58, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: They don't "give preference" to the prosaic meaning; they only give it, and don't mention environmentalism, since the environmentalist usage is just a context-specific application of its prosaic meaning (in Japanese; clearly in English it is a specialized environmentalist word). (Some of the dictionaries also give a religious meaning of "impure", but that seems irrelevant.)

BTW, @Imaginatorium: @Curly Turkey: @Margin1522: did you notice the spin-off article Mottainai Grandma?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:07, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

It is not a spin off article, it is an article for a bestselling novel that got enough coverage in independent reliable sources to meet the notability standards for an article. I've made articles for books before when I noticed they had enough coverage. Dream Focus 22:37, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

"bestselling novel"? It's a short picture book. You first heard about it from me a couple of weeks ago, and since then apparently came across a few references to it while Googling sources for this article. But if you got from those sources that it is a "novel" then it is clear you did not read the sources carefully enough. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:44, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Novel, book, whatever. I don't see how many pages it has listed. It pops up in searches for information, so I figured it has enough coverage to have an article. Dream Focus 22:47, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

You created an article on it and didn't realize it was a children's picture book?! Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:09, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

The word "novel" sometimes just means "book". Typed the wrong word, get over it. Dream Focus 23:10, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) But you just indicated above that you thought the distinction between a novel and a children's picture book was based on the number of pages, and defended your error based on your not knowing how many pages there were and thinking it to be a novel, and you also added your article on the book to a cat for Japanese novels; you didn't simply type the wrong word here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:16, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

I then soon after edited the article to change it to the proper category of Category:Japanese children's literature. But feel free to pick apart and whine about every irrelevant thing you can think of, I don't really care. Dream Focus 10:34, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

I then soon after edited the article to change it to the proper category of Category:Japanese children's literature. No, I did. The beauty of edit summaries is that, even after a revdel, one does not need admin or researcher tools to demonstrate revisionist claims like the above to be false. Anyway, please answer Curly Turkey's question below (timestamp 23:26). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:04, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Nonsense. Your edit was in the first sentence where you removed the word "novel". I changed the category before you started editing. Dream Focus 11:12, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

TonyBallioni: can you confirm who changed the category? I remember it being Hijiri, but we can no longer see afte rthe revdel.

Dream Focus: while we're waiting to confirm, can you answer the question? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:16, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

It was definitely the cat I changed; my edit added four bytes to the article's size, which is exactly the difference in size between the words "novels" and "literature"; if I had removed it from the lead and replaced it with "book" there would be a negative one byte difference, while replacing it with "children's book" would have been +9. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:28, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Why the hell is this being mentioned here? I see in the one edit that wasn't blocked out [5] Japanese children's novels was a category, so perhaps I changed it to that, and someone else changed it to the current Japanese children's literature. Doesn't matter. That has nothing to do with this article here, or anything else. Dream Focus 11:29, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

To be clear, Dream Focus, you are the one who has honed in on this "issue". Both Curly Turkey and I have repeatedly asked you to answer the question What are your concrete objections to [the example lead CT wrote above that reflects the sources cited in the article]?, and you have been ignoring us to focus on the "bestselling novel" in question. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:36, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Of course it's directly relevant—all the edits you've made to that article are in reaction to what's going on here. Why aren't you answering the question, by the way? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:45, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Dream Focus changed it to Japanese children's novels at 18:07 on 25 February 2018. Hijiri88 changed it to the current category on 00:44 26 February 2018. The one revision cited above was not revdel'd because it was the one revision that did not contain a copyright violation. TonyBallioni (talk) 14:21, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

And he's done such a botch on the article. He has one source translating mottainai as "don't waste" and another as "wasteful" (opposite meanings!) guess which one he chooses as a translation? Of course, the one that contradicts every dicitonary. But, hey!—"Wikipedia goes by what reliable sources say"! And now we have two shitty, counterfactual articles instead of one. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:44, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: I guess it's a problem of necessary punctuation and capitalization. In the children's book Mottainai Grandma (if I recall correctly -- I read it with a group of children of Japanese ex-pats in Dublin nine years ago) it is primarily used as a standalone sentence that could be accurately translated with the negative imprerative "Don't waste!", and so this translation being given in sources about the picture book makes a degree of sense. The problem is that it is being cited without the punctuation and so on, in a manner that could lead readers to believe "私はもったいないです。" means "I don't waste." It's possible that some of the popular news media sources are also getting this wrong. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:31, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

No way it's an imperative—it may imply "[don't be] wastful" the way urusai implies "[don't be] noisy", but that's strictly by implication (the way "you fucknut" implies "[don't be such a] fucknut")—punctuation and capitalization wouldn't change that. The important thing to note, though, is that Dream Focus can't even be bothered to sort out the sources they themself is citing. This is a major, recurring problem, as with the conflicting etymologies they've added (is it a Buddhist term or a parent's admonishment?) Dream Focus is repeatedly proving themself to lack the basic competence to put together these articles—and disruptively so. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:00, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

You mean "please don't look behind the curtain"? You're in over your head, Dream Focus. You don't understand the subject, and you're cherrypicking and misusing sources to push an agenda. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:14, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

There is no agenda. Wikipedia goes by what reliable sources say. The fact that some of you want to ignore what the Prime Minister of Japan said, a nobel peace winner says, and various reliable news sources from Japan as well those from other parts of the world say, is ridiculous. Dream Focus 23:18, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: I'm not ignoring what Koizumi said; I'm interpreting it in light of his position in the Japanese political sphere and the fact that he is of the generation of Japanese who grew up in the post-War years, as anyone with a basic education in Japanese history would. Anyway, can you please stop referring to him as "the Prime Minister of Japan"? He hasn't been prime minister for more than a decade, and Japan has gone through a half-dozen prime ministers since his term ended. As Curly Turkey noted above, the current prime minister appears to use the word far more often to simply mean "wasteful". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:35, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Except (a) you're rejecting what several of our sources are saying; (b) you're rejecting the fact that the vast majority of Japanese sources use the word in its non-specialized senses; and (c) you're cherrypicking from our sources what to put in the article (offhand comments, mentions in passing, etc). Besides, Wikipedia sourcing policy is not "if a source says it, we get to say it, too"—there are WP:WEIGHT, WP:FRINGE, etc to consider.

The example lead I wrote above reflects the sources cited in the article. What are your concrete objections to it? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:26, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

Just so everyone knows what we are talking about, there is a video on YouTube of the original book being read aloud. It takes about 5 minutes. The "last grain of rice" thing is on the first page, so that's where that came from. And there's also a video of the Mottainai song :) With lyrics and choreography by the author. – Margin1522 (talk) 11:46, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: Yes, it's a very nice little book, and despite this discussion the above-described 2009 event will remain a fond memory for me. On a more relevant note, would you consider moving the above comment (and my present response)? CT's comment had nothing to do with Mottainai Baasan, so it looks like your comment was misplaced, and I already moved an earlier comment to avoid distracting from CT's very important final question. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:56, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Tally?

So far it's User:Curly Turkey, me and User:Margin1522 in favour of and User:Andrew Davidson against the proposal. @Imaginatorium: What do you make of it? @Dream Focus: You've been pinged a few times and asked to comment on the proposal, but have been silent; is it safe to assume you are neutral? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:18, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• Consensus isn't a raise of hands, and Andrew Davidson's oppose was based his assertion there were no sources supporting it—since there are, we currently have no valid opposes. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 10:55, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

@Curly Turkey: I know, and the consensus is already obvious. But it would still be nice to know where everyone stands. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:09, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• I have already stated why I am opposed to it. I didn't put the word oppose before my statement above though, so perhaps it was not obvious enough. Feel free to argue from now until the end of time if you want, neither of us will ever convince the other. Dream Focus 12:36, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: It's a bit disingenuous to say you've "already" stated why you opposed it when you only did so seven minutes earlier. Your implying that our poor reading ability is to blame for not understanding your "not obvious" statement that you hadn't posted yet is noted. Anyway, would you mind citing a source that supports your assertion that Its not just used by environmentalists? Are you referring to its mundane use as an everyday Japanese word? In English, the term seems to be used exclusively in an environmentalist context. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:33, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

I just noticed that the comment about which I received an email notification was blanked and replaced with the above, so the reason for opposition is not apparently mentioned anywhere. So ... what solid reason for opposition is left? Virtually every other comment since the proposal has focused on the children's picture book Mottainai Bāsan. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 21:41, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Dream Focus: It's not clear what concrete issue you have with my proposal. Could you be explicit? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 21:42, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

• Its not just for environmentalists, as I said before, in the section above this one, based on what the former prime minister of Japan and various news sources have said about it. The current lead is fine. Dream Focus 22:17, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

@Dream Focus: In English? Japanese politicians reminiscing about how a Japanese word was used when Japan was a poor war-ravaged country with food shortages doesn't really count because Wikipedia is not a dictionary. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:21, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

If I may ask, where in the world did you get this? Have you read the speech? It talks about "protecting the planet", "global; warming", solar and wind power at the Prime Minister's residence, "mass consumption and mass disposal", and "how the 3Rs [Reduce, Reuse and Recycle] be encapsulated in this one word of 'mottainai'." Does't it seem fair to say that he had environmental concerns in mind when he said that? Someone explain to me why the article is "broken" if it cites this speech. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:04, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Margin1522: this is discussed elsewhere—the article claims that the word's origin is both in ancient Buddhism and form the mouths of stern parents. An article that contradicts itself is broken. This article is extremely poorly researched and unbalanced—it is a hodgepodge of snippets from whatever sources the editors could scrape together, rather than a summary of the scholarly consensus on the topic. The Koizumi quote is a perfect example of this—its factual veracity is in question, it is taken out of context, and it is given an inappropriate WP:WEIGHT (do the other sources agree with Koizumi)? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:14, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Well, I'm afraid this isn't making a lot of sense. The article never mentions stern parents, and even if it did, religions influence cultural norms and stern parents enforce cultural norms, so where is the conflict? Parents still cite Moses. About the sources, these articles don't spring fully formed like Athena from the head of Zeus. It might take a while. And why does Koizumi's quote have a problem with its factual veracity? It's from the cabinet office. Of course, he didn't say exactly that, because it's a translation. What he actually said was 　日本には昔から物を大切にする「もったいない」という言葉があります。 ... ３つのＲを一言で言えば「もったいない」ということです。 By factual veracity you mean that he had his facts wrong? – Margin1522 (talk) 08:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

"昔から" and "initially" do not mean the same thing. And where are parents teaching their children mentioned in the text you quote, anyway? Because that was the clear focus of the original article-breaking text. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:43, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

I think the quote's been replaced by a different one form the same article. Now we have a new problem---how on earth does one translate 日本には昔から物を大切にする「もったいない」という言葉があります。 as "In Japan, there has long been a spirit characterized by the word mottainai, which could be translated as 'don't waste what is valuable'."??? Neither "spirit" nor "don't waste what is valuable" are credible translations of what's in the original. Not that we should be spamming articles with the words of politicians. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:26, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Dream Focus: The proposal does not state it is "just for environmentalists". The consensus is that the current lead is misleading—even counterfactual—and will not stand. If you have a concrete issue with the actual proposal and can propose a non-problematic fix, this is your chance. If you are obstructing for the sake of obstruction—perhaps because you hold something against the proposer—then the proposal will go through as-is. This is your chance to demonstrate you can collaborate in good faith, Dream Focus. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:48, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

(P.S.—it looks particularly bad when you bring up the Prime Minister's quote again—we have an entire subsection on how that has broken the article. You'd be smart to strike that comment—sticking to it destroys your credibility.) Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:51, 28 February 2018 (UTC)

Credibility with who? You two will argue nonstop no matter how many reliable sources are found or what anyone says. And your nonsense accusations against me obstructing for the sake of obstruction is ridiculous. Dream Focus 02:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

So there it goes out the window. You're defending your right to write articles that contradict themselves. Honestly, I'm considering ANI—between the multiple copyvios, the misrepresentation of sources, the refusal to work collaboratively, the contradictory text, the stonewalling, and the aggressive personalization of disputes, your contributions here have been extraordinarily disruptive.

As we have three supports and no opposes that count under WP:CONSENSUS (you can't oppose for the sake of opposing), I'm going to make the change, so that we no longer have a counterfactual lead. Any concrete issues with lead can be discussed with concrete porposed solutions here, by anyone willing to participate in a collaborative spirit. If you continue to disrupt, Dream Focus, I'm taking you straight to ANI. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 02:34, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Oh how dare not everyone agree with you. I find you both very annoying and I hope to never have to deal with either of you again. Kindly stop following me around to other articles. You both distort things, twisting them around so you can play the victim, and making ridiculous accusations against any who disagree with you. Dream Focus 02:52, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

"Oh how dare" we not allow the article to contradict itself? "How dare" we not allow copyvios to fill up the article? "How dare" we not allow you to fill the article with distortions of what your sources say? "How dare" we not allow you to WP:OWN an article whose subject you have no understanding of? Please read WP:CIR. You've given the rest of us a headache-inducing mess to clean up. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:07, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

Etymology section now contradicts itself

This is almost certainly a COPYVIO and will need to be revdelled, but even paraphrasing it seems inappropriate. I'd say it's overwhelmingly likely that Koizumi was referring (a bit oversimplistically for his non-Japanese audience) to rationing during (and shortages following) WWII, and we are reading a lot into the use of the word "initially". It doesn't seem to be related to etymology at all. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 22:30, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

The article doesn't mention World War 2 at all. People had food shortages before then. And its not a copyvio. There are so many ways to rewrite the same information. Dream Focus 22:45, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

The paraphrase is so close to the original that it definitely needs to be revdelled. Also—it's a statement made by a politician pushing an agenda, not a historian. It's not acceptable as a source. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:12, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

And, oh my god—holy shit!—the article now does contradict itself! Dream Focus, this is exactly why we reject "if a source says it, so can we". You've now broken the fucking article by having it claim that the term originates both in Buddhism and in the mouths of stern parents! Why the fuck are you doing this?! What adult could possibly think this was an appropriate thing to do?! Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 23:33, 25 February 2018 (UTC)

• I've revdel'd that as a close paraphrase that was in violation of the English Wikipedia's copyright policy. I have no opinion on the content, and only revdel'd in my capacity as an uninvolved administrator. TonyBallioni (talk) 00:22, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Question

Not a noun, probably not a concept, etc... – would it nonetheless be linguistically correct to indicate "mottainai!" as a maxim? Something that just crossed my mind, so I just ask the question with no other intention than trying to get my head around this. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:03, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Not a "maxim" by any stretch of the imagination, no—it's a an adjective, but a special type of adjective that in Japanese is used in a verb-like manner, so that "Mottainai!" in Japanese can be a complete grammatical sentence on its own (meaning "[it] is wasteful").

I've proposed a wording above. Do you have any issue with it? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:13, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) @Francis Schonken: I don't think anyone is saying it is "not a concept" -- I honestly don't know what a "concept" is as that word has been used here and on RSN in the past week, so I could hardly argue that mottainai is not one. Put simply, it's an adjective meaning "wasteful" that, because of niceties of Japanese grammar, can be used without other words to form a sentence meaning "That is wasteful", "You are wasteful", "This is wasteful", "This whole thing is a massive waste of time and effort", etc. I doubt coming up with more words that could be used to describe it ("slogan" is another; "buzzword"; "aphorism"; "cliché"; etc.) would solve the problem, and this isn't an article on linguistics, so going into detail about what exactly the word is seems like a waste. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:28, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

They mean "concept" as a shorthand for "uniquely Japanese concept". Even if such a concept exists, we don't have evidence that mottainai and that supposed concept are one and the same (compare to an aesthetic term such as yūgen). Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 11:50, 26 February 2018 (UTC)

Does this correctly interpret what the source says?

The text now says:

"In the 21st century, mottainai is used in Japan as a convenient one-word encapsulation of concerns about resource scacity, food security, environmental degradation, and the throw-away culture."

This is cited to Murko Siniawer, Eiko (2014). "'Affluence of the Heart': Wastefulness and the Search for Meaning in Millennial Japan". The Journal of Asian Studies. Cambridge University Press, Association for Asian Studies. 73 (1): 165–186. On page 166, the source states:

In postwar Japan, the most predominant association of "mottainai" was with wasteful as in, "what a waste!" - with the millennial incarnation widely used to criticize waste of various kinds, including the squandering of material objects and resources such as and energy. "Mottainai" thus became a convenient, one-word encapsulation of concerns about resource scarcity, food security, the proliferation of garbage, and a throw-away culture, and the term was used to push back against the perceived prevalence of consumerism, materialism, and environmental degradation.

Mottainai may have a use as a buzzword in this sense, but the wording "is used in Japan as" implies this is the default usage, which is absolutely counter to the facts (and the source does not state that the default meaning has ceased to be the default, as the article text implies). We have an awful lot of this misinterpretation of the sources in this manner going on in the article. It's exhausting trying to protect the article against this type of distortion (which it's still full of). What can we do about this? Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 03:02, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

I would say if it feels like too much work, simply cutting material that seems dubious and putting it on this talk page (or even a talk subpage) to be brought up to standard by anyone motivated enough to do so would be a good idea. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:30, 1 March 2018 (UTC)

The article says "Japan" and "millennial". The text says "Japan" and "21st century". Isn't that what she means? Where's the misinterpretation? Or is it that you want to distinguish between "widely used" and "default"? Sure, if you like, go ahead and change "In the 21st century, mottainai is used in Japan" to "In 21st-century Japan, mottainai is widely used..." if you think that makes it more understandable.– Margin1522 (talk) 13:16, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

"widely used" does not mean "primarily used", which is the implication of our article. One could say "The word come is widely used in contemporary English to mean ejaculate", and this would be completely true; but no one would say that telling a Japanese audience that that is the primary meaning of the word in English is not misleading. Also, the paraphrasing is too close, and will need to be removed and rev-delled, as virtually every single word of our text is lifted directly from the source. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 19:21, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

The article makes no claims about primary meanings. Other than that, I'm not going to reply to this. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)|

@Margin1522: I was assuming good faith, but you know it's pretty disingenuous, after you've already been told off once on this page for inserting closely paraphrased text, to defend another instance of closely paraphrased text, as supposedly not being a misrepresentation of the source, even when you just lifted the whole paragraph from the second page of the article without any clear indication that you had even read pages 167-186. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 19:42, 2 March 2018 (UTC)

The orignal was four lines and 82 words. The text is a line and a half and 27 words. It's attributed with a footnote and as a summary of what she wrote there's nothing wrong with it. Just for you, I will put one phrase in quotes. If you can do better, go ahead. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:21, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

So I go to edit it, and find that it had been deleted. So I put it back. If you want to delete it again, please take it to dispute resolution. – Margin1522 (talk) 04:44, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

When more than one editor has concrete issues with the text, you don't just get to reinsert it. Some of the problems:

"In 21st-century Japan, mottainai is widely used as a "convenient one-word encapsulation" of concerns about resource scacity, food security, environmental degradation, and the throw-away culture."

This is a special usage, and is not marked as such, which is misleading, as mottainai is used literally every day without this baggage; t

"In his speech, Koizumi refered to the 3Rs (Reduce, Reuse and Recycle), and said that they "can be encapsulated in this one word of 'mottainai'"."

Koizumi did not originate this usage, so it's misleading to attribute it to him (WP:WEIGHT issues again), and the text implies that the term mottainai itself carries the baggage of the 3Rs, which we know it does not.

This is fairly typical of Wikipedia articles—editors take a magpie approach, slapping in anything they happen to come across without regard to how it comes across to the reader, to how balanced it is with the rest of the article, or to how representative it is of actual research on the topic. It's done in good faith, but makes for fantastically distorted articles. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 05:24, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Sort of struggling to understand what this is getting at. Of course Prime Ministers don't originate every idea they talk about. They get ideas from other people and support them or not. The intention here, from both you and Hijiri88 and his "tree-hugger" comment seems to be to compartmentalize "environmentalists" and relegate their concerns to a corner somewhere. I don't think that's very wise or even accurate. By now it's a politcal, economic, and social problem that should concern everyone and to a certain extent does. – Margin1522 (talk) 08:55, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: Please retract the above personal attack. I have never used the phrase "tree-hugger" unironically, and the context above in which I used it in scare-quotes had a very specific, obvious purpose that was not meant to compartmentalize anyone, but merely to show you an example of the word's being used (by a comic relief sidekick in a fictional cartoon from the mid-1980s) with a connotation of man's exploitation of nature being a good, or at least morally neutral, thing (i.e., the opposite of an environmentalist sense). Your reading it the way you claim to above is either a deliberate attempt to misrepresent what I said or a gross failure to read comments before snidely quoting them in unrelated contexts. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: It's not enough to simply remove some of the copy-pasted words, so talking about lines and words as you do in your first sentence is meaningless. If a source includes a unique construction like a convenient, one-word encapsulation of concerns about resource scarcity, food security, the proliferation of garbage, and a throw-away culture, you are not allowed simply remove a comma and swap out "the proliferation of garbage" for "environmental degradation" (which you also lifted from elsewhere in the same long sentence in the source) and call it a paraphrase. When every single word of your sentence (even "In ... the twenty-first century" appears in the abstract and presumably elsewhere) is lifted right out of the source, that is too much. You need to summarize in your own words, not simply borrow all your favourite words from the source and slightly change the order around. If you continue to reject this basic principle I'm going to have to place a warning on your talk page, and if you reject even that this'll probably end up at CCI. Unmarked quotation and close paraphrasing are extremely serious issues, and I'm not just saying this to undermine you and "win" a content dispute: I wrote the same thing in a message to another user before either you or Dream Focus had ever edited this page. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:04, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Go ahead. I added another sentence to tell the readers who she is and that she's writing a book on it. If you still want to pursue it, feel free. – Margin1522 (talk) 08:38, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: Go ahead ... and do what? Are you being deliberately evasive so that you can avoid owning your own copyright infringement? The article currently includes copy-pasted text from a copyrighted source, and both the WP:ONUS and the WP:BURDEN are on you to appropriately edit it so as not to infringe on copyright; CT and I have both indicated that we don't think the text belongs in the article at all (and I don't even have access to the source), so demanding that we do your work and paraphrase the source for you is inappropriate. Or do you mean "go ahead and remove the text again", because you have not indicated any acceptance of our arguments, making this look very much like you are trying to goad us into an edit war.

@TonyBallioni: Sorry to bother you about this again, but when you get around to looking at the text for revdel as I requested earlier, would you consider issuing another warning to Margin1522, who apparently still doesn't understand what he is doing wrong?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:12, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: BTW, if you still doubt the seriousness of what you are doing, note that a case related to the same thing as you are doing (just on a potentially much larger scale) is currently at the Administrators' Noticeboard: WP:AN#Our most prolific article creator is (or was) a copyright violator... If we can't trust that your contributions are written entirely in your own words (words which you are at liberty to release under a free license), then articles you have added text to will need to be examined, and if your text is found to violate copyright, it will need to be removed or rewritten, and every single version of the article edited by any other editor that happened to include it will need to be removed from the public log. Mottainai, indeed. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:39, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Hijiri88:I must say this is outrageous. You demanded an atribution, so I wrote one, which you promptly deleted, and then turned around and are trying to get me warned for lack of an atribution? What is going on here? – Margin1522 (talk) 10:25, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: What are you talking about? The last time I "demanded" attribution was in relation to a completely different set of quotations more than a week ago, where the quote marks were already in place but a lack of inline attribution made it ambiguous whom we were quoting. Here the problem is you using the exact same words as your source, without marking it as a quotation. I don't see what is so outrageous about my pointing out to you that this is a violation of our copyright policy. Do you understand this or not? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:35, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

There are quote marks, there is a footnote, the passage is rewritten and less than half the length of the original (27 words!), and there was an atribution, until you deleted it. Is this really the fight you want? You've been banned before for WP:BATTLEGROUND, but this is ridiculous. – Margin1522 (talk) 11:11, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

@Margin1522: The quote marks are only around a small portion of the lifted text, and you added them after I commented that the text was copyvio, indicating that at least at that time you understood (to a certain, insufficient, extent) that the problem was plagiarism. "Rewriting" by cutting some of the text but not actually changing any of the words you leave in is not sufficient rewriting for copyright purposes. As for attribution: I honestly have no idea what you are talking about; attributed inline or by footnote, word-for-word copied text must be in quotation marks, and I didn't remove any attribution -- what I did was remove a PEACOCK-ish and DATED inline description of the author of the source. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:23, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

OK, OK, you win. I have blanked the passage and a related passage, which harms the article, but I don't have the patience for this. Do I think it's wrong and unjust? Yes I do. But that's life. – Margin1522 (talk) 12:25, 3 March 2018 (UTC)

Etymology

Per your comment, I only used peer-reviewed academic journals, I never used NPR. And the journals do describe mottainai as a "word". You could call it two words, but I'd rather describe it the way that the sources describe it. Also I never used any dictionaries. If the material were just a dictionary definition, it would only be in dictionaries. I found the etymology in academic journals. I see no consensus to delete the material. Above, @Margin1522: favoured mentioning the etymology. The material should be restored.Martinthewriter (talk) 03:00, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so a few points probably need to be made here:

1. Normally, if someone messages you on your talk page, as I did here, it is considered best practice to either respond in the same place or on the other person's talk page. Occasionally, you will get a message that was put on your talk page inappropriately, such as to avoid the scrutiny of posting on the article talk page, but in this case I messaged you because I considered this content issue to be essentially resolved, and was offering you advice about not restoring text without restoring the citations that were attached to it.
2. I only used peer-reviewed academic journals, I never used NPR This seems wrong -- the NPR source says Mottainai is an old Buddhist word and your text said It is an old Buddhist word. Also, you didn't actually "use" any peer-reviewed academic journals: you restored text to the article that had previously been removed, leaving some of the citations intact while removing the ones that didn't look like peer-reviewed academic journals.
3. the journals do describe mottainai as a "word" Well, in English it certainly is, but you are discussing it in terms of its Japanese etymology. As I said on your talk page, in modern Japanese it is essentially a single word (one of the so-called "i-adjectives"), and so it makes sense to describe it that way in certain contexts, but given that the nai form used in the Tokyo dialect of spoken Japanese only became standard in writing in the late 19th century, it is misleading to call it an "old word" -- it was mottainashi until relatively recently.
4. As for simply referring to it as a "word" in general, as I said on your talk page I have no problem with that and don't intend to change passages like the word is also used to mean "impious; irreverent" or "more than one deserves". You don't need to cite scholarly journals for that kind of stuff, and in fact Wikipedia is not supposed to mirror the writing style of scholarly journals.
5. You could call it two words, but I'd rather describe it the way that the sources describe it. Again, you are misinterpreting my comment. (Did you post your reply in a different place because you intend to misquote me?)
6. If the material were just a dictionary definition, it would only be in dictionaries. WP:NOTDICT says we don't include encyclopedia articles on random words and phrases that might have entries in a dictionary. The generally accepted rule of thumb is that if an article topic is a "concept" and not the word itself, then including extensive commentary on the etymology of the word is inappropriate.
7. I found the etymology in academic journals. Again, no you didn't -- virtually everything you "wrote" was verbatim taken from earlier versions of this article, so at best you simply checked the citations that were already present, and removed the citations that you couldn't describe as "peer-reviewed academic journals". Anyway, the fact that academic journals go into tremendous detail on such topics as "usage of mottai-nashi in medieval Japanese literature" doesn't mean we should -- that material may, however, be acceptable for wikt:もったいない or wikt:mottainai (the latter of which curiously doesn't list it as an English word.
8. I see no consensus to delete the material. Above, @Margin1522: favoured mentioning the etymology. The material should be restored. The content was removed from the article 21 months ago, and no one challenged its removal at the time. Please provide a diff if you believe M1522 posted that he opposed the removal and I somehow missed it, since "Ctl+F"ing the page for "etymology" didn't bring it up. Additionally, there six people involved in the discussion last February, so even if M1522 had mentioned that he favoured restoring it, it should be assumed that five others saw the comment and ignored it.
9. On a related: your account was created in January 2018, since which time you've made a total of seven edits outside the mainspace. Given this background, your showing up on a relatively low-traffic article and restoring text that had been removed in February 2018 (21 months ago), seems somewhat suspicious, especially your arbitrarily choosing to ping one of the editors who was involved in the February 2018 discussion but has hardly edited Wikipedia since. I am not necessarily implying that you are the same person, but if you received a notification on some off-wiki forum such as email or the like and came here to make an edit that someone else asked you to make, you are also generally required to disclose that.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:12, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

No, I'm not Margin1522, but I wanted to ping the last person involved in the discussion. It seems that the NPR article does have similar information, but it's better to use peer-reviewed scholarship. I exclusively used academic materials for the new information. I would prefer this discussion to focus on academic materials, not personal opinions. All the information added comes from academic materials, and it can only be refuted with other academic materials. For example, if the etymology was insignificant, why do most of the academic papers on mottainai mention it?Martinthewriter (talk) 05:31, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

@Martinthewriter: For example, if the etymology was insignificant, why do most of the academic papers on mottainai mention it? Well, why do most academic papers on the word "water" discuss the etymology of that word? Our article on the substance water devotes a total of two sentences to that word's etymology, giving a very rough outline of the history of the word going back to Proto-Indo-European; for most Japanese words (and mottainai is no exception) such historical details are not known at the moment, and may never be ascertainable, and yet you added nine sentences discussing everything from the supposed religious significance of the root word mottai (the target audience for most scholarly papers on Japanese historical linguistics would not need to be told that the nai in mottainai is a separate element that has no religious significance) to historical usage of the word in a medieval Japanese text. Additionally, use of the idiosyncratic translation "Record of the Genpei War" makes it quite likely your source, Morrow and Izor, consulted the 2015 version of Wikipedia; the story they say comes from the Jōsuiki actually, if one reads the citation they give, comes from the more famous "standard" Tale of the Heike, meaning that unless we consult McCullough to verify either that they were right and the word is used in the Jōsuiki (say, for instance, if McCullough cited a variant text in a footnote) or that they were wrong and McCullough actually says the Heike is the oldest use of mottainai (and they wrongly conflated the two quite-different works). Neither Morrow nor Izor (he links to his blog from here) is a specialist in any of the relevant fields, so we really shouldn't be assuming they are correct when their citation appears to contradict their text.

I would prefer this discussion to focus on academic materials, not personal opinions. Nothing I said above was a "personal opinion", although it is possible that I was assuming you came to this article with a relatively similar level of background knowledge to me. If you and I are interpreting sources differently because I know that scholars use mottainai as a shorthand for the classical mottai-nashi and you don't, then I would appreciate your disclosing that fact.

Do you read Japanese? If you read modern Japanese, are you also familiar at all with classical Japanese?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:41, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, of course I'm familiar with the history of the Japanese language, but I hate to impose my own ideas on an article. I prefer to just let the scholars speak for themselves, rather than contradicting them with my own ideas. I believe that the strong focus scholars give to the history of the term mottainai means that we also should inform readers of it. Even you admit that other Wikipedia articles discuss etymology, so you were wrong to revert the entire edit. You could have trimmed it instead. The etymology and the religious significance are both important issues widely discussed in academic articles, so I prefer giving the matter full due. Your problem again is that you cite no scholarship to back up your own ideas. I just want to cite the leading scholars, not nitpick their works based on my own research.Martinthewriter (talk) 06:56, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Stop inserting unverifiable content into the article, and stop misquoting sources.

Given that you have repeatedly lied and claimed you "got your information from academic sources", when really what you were doing was tagging random GBooks hits onto old, unsourced Wikipedia text, I see no reason to continue wasting my time by assuming good faith. You claim you are "familiar with the history of the Japanese language", but your actions here indicate otherwise, and given the number of times you've lied about having got your information from sources, I see no reason to assume you aren't lying when you claim to speak Japanese. (Answering the question "Do you read Japanese?" with "Yes, of course I'm familiar with the history of the Japanese language" is either a very evasive way of saying "No" or a very roundabout way of saying "Yes".)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I actually just checked, and the relevant page in McCullough is on GBooks. The quote as she gives it is A bow is not worth a life She attributes the quote to several "veteran warriors", not to a single vassal, and does not make any mention of the language of the source text at this point. So it's possible that Morrow and Izor were actually giving their own translation of a variant text that specifies a single vassal, but if that is the case then I really would rather see a book or journal article written by a specialist in the relevant field.

Additionally, I should apologize, as it seems your text did differ somewhat from the previous version, which doesn't seem to have recounted that Yoshitsune dropped his bow. However,Furthermore, your text claims Yoshitsune was on horseback, something not verified in either McCullough or Morrow and Izor (McCullough actually says Yoshitsune was "far from the shore"). Could you explain where you got the more detailed description of the story?

I did a search for the quote you did provide; it apparently came from an earlier version of the Wikipedia article than the one I was reading. Now that I have established that you are just tagging sources onto old Wikipedia text without actually checking what those sources say, I would appreciate if you would stop wasting my time by claiming you "got your information from academic articles".

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:09, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

No, all the information came from academic sources. And yes, he was on horseback, the original source says "rode". However, since Morrow and Izor did not mention this detail, I will delete it. The rest should stay though. We need to stick with the scholarship, not personal opinion. If necessary, we could start a request for comment, but I believe that is unnecessary since all this material comes from high quality academic materials.Martinthewriter (talk) 07:23, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

No, all the information came from academic sources. Stop lying. You reinserted unsourced text that had been removed from Wikipedia years ago and tagged on citations you hadn't read. Then when called out on this, you WP:SYNTHesized the Wikipedia text with what I explicitly stated the sources said (given the timing, you definitely could not have gone back and rewritten the whole text -- you just took out the word "horseback" and reworded the text slightly. And yes, he was on horseback, the original source says "rode". Most people don't ride horses out to sea -- they ride "boats" or "ships". And what do you even mean by "the original source"? However, since Morrow and Izor did not mention this detail, I will delete it. Umm ... what? Which source is "the original"? You still only cite Morrow and Izor.

The rest should stay though. We need to stick with the scholarship, not personal opinion. You are not sticking to scholarship, though -- you're tagging sources you haven't read onto Wikipedia text on the assumption that it's probably all the same. And please, please, please stop accusing me of editing based on "personal opinion" -- if you make this snide remark again I will request that you be blocked.

If necessary, we could start a request for comment, but I believe that is unnecessary since all this material comes from high quality academic materials. Again, stop lying -- you restored a previous version of Wikipedia without a care for whether your "sources" verified it. If you attempt to canvas !votes with a biased RFC question, I will request that the RFC be speedy-closed and you be issued a final warning (one instance of canvassing is not really a blockable offence).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:37, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not clear what you mean because you never attempted to use scholarly sources to contradict the scholarship I cited. I cited Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Saitama University and Journal of Analytical Psychology. I just want to seek a consensus in good faith, but I do believe that consensus ought to be based on scholarship, not personal opinion. Just reverting outright isn't helping matters.Martinthewriter (talk) 07:43, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

It's not clear what you mean because you never attempted to use scholarly sources to contradict the scholarship I cited. I don't need to, since the scholarship you cited didn't actually verify the content you attributed to it -- you just tagged a bunch of scholarly-looking sources, without reading them, onto the text you wanted to add to Wikipedia, which coincidentally was exactly the same as the text that was removed years ago. I just want to seek a consensus in good faith, but I do believe that consensus ought to be based on scholarship, not personal opinion. I have now asked you three times to stop claiming my edits are based on "personal opinion". DROP IT NOW. Just reverting outright isn't helping matters. I know -- so you should stop doing it. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:48, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

All the sources I cited back up what the article text says. You can check the Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Saitama University and Journal of Analytical Psychology yourself. I have read them, and they are accurately cited. Maybe if we take some more time to go over the material line by line, we can figure out what your concern really is. Right now, it's not clear why you think this scholarship is incorrect. I don't have so much time every day to keep posting, but it's better to discuss this slowly to get to the bottom of what is wrong, and not be so quick to revert.Martinthewriter (talk) 07:57, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I miscounted -- you are in breach of 3RR. As for going over the material line-by-line, I would rather not -- I've already sunk far more time than I should have to based on my having assumed you weren't lying about the content of the one source you cited that I had quick access to. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:01, 11 November 2019 (UTC)

I still believe that the Journal of Asian Studies, Journal of Saitama University and Journal of Analytical Psychology are good sources. Between the previous version based on the personal opinion of the anonymous, and the current version based on scholarship, I still favor the scholarship.Martinthewriter (talk) 01:09, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@Martinthewriter: So, is it your intention to continue edit-warring and making bizarre non-sequiturs like the above instead of engaging in constructive talk page discussion? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:12, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

You made some good points above but there is too much text and too much commentary on side issues such as other editors and edit warring. I don't know if Martinthewriter's text (possibly restored from 21 months ago) is suitable, but their comment that "it's better to discuss this slowly to get to the bottom of what is wrong, and not be so quick to revert" is correct. At another time, we could check if old text was found and restored, and wonder how that happened. At the moment, it would be better to focus on the disputed text, one component at a time. Johnuniq (talk) 06:40, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@Johnuniq: I did check, and it was restored, almost word-for-word, from content that had been previously removed as a compromise in order to resolve a previous dispute. The text included some new citations, which don't appear to support the content. Regardless of why this editor who was not apparently involved in the previous dispute has shown up now to try to undo the compromise, it is still inappropriate for him to do so. Several editors, one of whom is sadly no longer editing, came to the agreement that the article could remain as a standalone piece if it didn't include misleading commentary presenting "mottainai" as an "ancient Japanese concept"; before such material is restored, there would need to be a discussion as to whether the better solution would be to redirect the entire page and add that material to the Wangari Maathai article. Furthermore, claiming that the contentious material must remain in the article while discussion takes place, and also refusing to engage in discussion, is disruptive: Martin claimed four times in a row, despite numerous warnings to drop it, that I was basing my edits on "personal opinion" rather than academic sources, which completely turns WP:BURDEN on its head. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:40, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

I agree with Martinthewriter. The Journal of Asian Studies is an excellent source. Most of these articles are available online, and the articles do verify what's on Wikipedia. Hijri88, what you are doing is called original research. Martinthewriter has a good point. Where are the books or articles to refute the information that was added to the article? We have to assume that the journal articles are true unless a good scholar has refuted them. IvoryTower123 (talk) 18:56, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@IvoryTower123: The Journal of Asian Studies is an excellent source. Most of these articles are available online, and the articles do verify what's on Wikipedia. Hijri88, what you are doing is called original research. Martinthewriter has a good point. Where are the books or articles to refute the information that was added to the article? We have to assume that the journal articles are true unless a good scholar has refuted them. It appears you have misunderstood this discussion. Please re-read it, and if you still do not understand, I would be happy to explain. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:15, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

If we do this step-by-step, then we could certainly start with Yamaori Tetsuo, who is cited in the Journal of Asian Studies. I believe that this is a reliable source. What arguments indicate it is unreliable?Martinthewriter (talk) 19:14, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Why does what Yamaori says need to be cited? Moreover, you still have not answered my question above, which is critical to citing Japanese-language scholarship: do you read Japanese? The fact of the matter is that you didn't read Yamaori and decide he should be cited in the article; you Googled up content that could be used to reinstate content that had already been removed per community consensus. (The quote comes from Eiko Maruko Siniawer not Yamaori, who wrote in Japanese; Siniawer presents it as a paraphrase, not a quotation -- this kind of clumsy editing is what happens when you Google up sources in order to "win" Wikipedia arguments rather than actually try to build encyclopedia articles, and you can ask User:Nishidani, or rather User:CurtisNaito, about that.) It's clear you didn't actually go out and find the Journal of Saitama University source you cited either, since you reinstated the now-dead link that had been removed years ago. I actually did find it (here) -- it kinda verifies what you attribute to it, except referring to a word as part of the cultural heritage of a people who speak that language is ... not really something worth noting, and as was noted last February the religious sense of the word ("impure") is quite unrelated to the "wasteful" meaning employed by environmentalists, so I would be reluctant to take the word of an early childhood pedagogy scholar writing about environmental awareness for Japanese kindergarten students that Yamaori, a scholar of religion, was conflating the two. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 20:15, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

Have been belled to drop in, read the above and perhaps comment, all that comes to mind is the following quotation from 夏目漱石, それから (1909) 新潮文庫　1968 p.33.

言葉丈は滾々として、勿体らしく出るが、要するに端倪すべからざる空談であるNishidani (talk) 21:35, 12 November 2019 (UTC)

@Nishidani: It's not entirely clear what you mean to draw attention to with the above quotation. Is all this talk of "academic sources" 勿体らしい because the "reliable" ones all happen to come from within a year or so of Maathai? Are the words (言葉丈) coming out of both sides abundant (滾々) but ultimately meaningless? Given your past interactions with me, I'm a little inclined to interpret it as meaning I am wasting my time engaging in either 端倪 or 空談 on this mess. (And you'd be right: I'm way behind on my WAM entries this year.) But then again you might be saying that the whole thing is pointless and therefore the one who instigated it should be given a slap on the wrist and the previous status quo restored? I enjoy engaging in back-and-forths with you about this stuff on your talk page or by email, but leaving that quote there in this particular context is just a little unsettling. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:01, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Shit, or do you simply mean that this conversation is 端倪すべからざる空談, and you only included the rest of the quote to pun on 勿体らしく出る and 勿体無い? (Another interpretation would be that you provided the Soseki quote using 勿体らしい to discredit by somewhat-clumsy and not-well-qualified statement further up that 勿体 by itself was essentially a dead word.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:05, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

What's that line by Falstaff? 'I am now about no waste; I am about thrift.'

With a topic like this, it can be the case that the available sources do not adequately address the obvious issues that an article would require for completeness. Therefore those that can perceive the obvious fact that 'mottainai's rise to prominence as an ancient Japanese value, and therefore to be redeployed as a verbal prop for a charter (in Malinowski's sense) of efficient recycling and waste disposal in the ecology of an industrial nation, feel that the description ignores the possibility that we have the 'invention of a new tradition' (per Hobsbawm and Ranger 1983).

What one needs, or should look for, evidently, is material

(a) on the use of mottainai in Japanese, not just with one instance from the Genpei Jōsuiki, but a study of the Buddhist usage behind it, and the use of mottai/mottainai historically in Japanese from early times down to the present, including evidence of the semantic changes the latter underwent.

(b) Ascertaining if mottainai was a traditional key word in metropolitan waste disposal in premodern Japan. I don't think that, on having a crap, an Edoite, like Rodin's Thinker, got into a stink wracking his/her brains in the 憚りや wondering how to dispose of the resultant 下肥 in order/ordure not to waste it.

(c)From the mid 17th century the central authorities began to regulate waste disposal to increase crop productiveness, by informing farmers, who until that time had no systematic care or technology for recycling, on how to recycle waste (不浄). Buddhism and Shinto had nothing to do with it: it was a result of state efficiency informed by material on this in Chinese agricultural manuals.　Was there any harping on a value specified as mottainai in those periods? Probably not. The value argument pitched to peasants concerned kegare, filthiness, and, in rational terms, how to turn 'dirt' into gold, by making discarded matter productive.

(d) Read books like Ishikawa Eisuke (石川英輔)'s 大江戸リサイクル事情 (講談社,1997) where you would expect to find it.

In any case, unless one finds secondary RS research that is aware of the historicity of what is now becoming a cultural meme, there's not much one can do.Nishidani (talk) 13:27, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Points (a) through (d) all look very reasonable, and I intend to work on it after WAM is over. Not that I feel I should have to (see below) but to prevent this mess from ever flaring up again.

That said, I don't think I agree with there's not much one can do. It has always been my interpretation, and I would hazard to guess the interpretation of most good-faith Wikipedians, that Wikipedia's notability guidelines allow for the deletion/merging of articles on topics for which there exists not enough reliable secondary source coverage for a standalone Wikipedia policy that also complies with our other core policies of NPOV and NOR. I could go and add commentary to the article debating the reliability of this or that source for this or that claim, and pointing out how the Seisuiki and/or Heike passage in question is not expressing some kind of deep Buddhist/Shinto/Pastafarian belief in the innate value of things so much as a simple earlier instance of a now common Japanese word for "wasteful" (since the passage actually shows Yoshitsune and his men debating the relative value of bows of various levels of quality as compared with a human life and/or the notoriety one might earn for having stolen someone's bow that they were too gutless to get back), but that would violate NOR. Simply "matching the sources", though, sometimes violates NPOV -- I don't think that's the case here, since it doesn't seem like any of these sources (at least the reliable ones, since obviously a kindergarten teacher writing about child psychology is not a reliable source for Japan's religious heritage) actually support the questionable content, but it was the case with Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Samuell Benta. (Actually in that case the conflict was between NPOV and BLP, since no original research would be required to make the article NPOV, just using sources that are reliable for information on random comic books but not for biographies of living persons. But the principle is the same.)

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 13:48, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Yes, I do read Japanese. The Journal of Asian Studies article cites Yamaori Tetsuo as a scholar holding that view. I did a great deal of reading of the pertinent sources before making these edits, so I know what I'm talking about. Yamaori Tetsuo feels that this matter warrants being written about, and Eiko Maruko Siniawer felt it warranted being mentioned. For this reason, we also should be mentioning it. I don't understand why scholars would write in such detail about matters that are not important. They must be important to at least mention. And if you don't agree with these scholars, we'll just include it as the opinion of x scholar. We can't deny that certain scholars have an opinion on this and view it as important. If we Wikipedians don’t view it as important, we'll just state it as the opinion of x scholar. Finally, I see no evidence of an earlier consensus. There was never a request for comment to determine consensus.Martinthewriter (talk) 02:02, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I did a great deal of reading of the pertinent sources before making these edits, so I know what I'm talking about. Then why did you make so many obvious mistakes? Yamaori Tetsuo feels that this matter warrants being written about I'm sorry, but have you read Yamaori 2006? It appears to be an interview, meaning Yamaori didn't actually write anything. These constant misquotations of reputable scholars are beginning to border on BLP violation; I would urge you to be cautious. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Moving forward

Okay, so at this point it seems I'm not going to get anywhere by trying to invoke the February 2018 discussions and ignoring bad-faith comments that do not address the specific content but repeat the phrases "academic sources" and "personal opinions".

So let's discuss content. I have not read either the Sato or Siniawer sources currently cited in the article, as both of them exist behind paywalls, and I learned a long time ago that it is a tremendous waste of both time and money to buy sources cited by one's opponents in Wikipedia disputes (75% of the time the sources just demonstrate that they are being misquoted in bad faith, and the other 25% either other free sources are available that say the same thing or the other party provides a quotation on the talk page that satisfies). I should not have to go out and read the sources myself, though, because the WP:BURDEN is always on the party wishing to include the content to demonstrate that their Wikipedia text is directly supported by their citations. Moreover, I have read a different Siniawer source published more recently that includes the exact same text, so either Siniawer used the same text twice, or modified it for whatever reason (in which case the new sources, accessible on GBooks, should take precedence). In that source, it is not clear at all that Yamaori was describing mottainai as an old Buddhist word rather than, say, that the concept behind it, that "the Japanese" find wastefulness regrettable, is linked to Buddhist ideas of evanescence and transience. Moreover, Siniawer calls the "assumption that there was a pure and unchanging Buddhist idea of mottainai which predated modern life" -- the whole drive of the recent changes to our present article -- "problematic". Given this, I can't believe that Siniawer 2014 could support the recent changes when Siniawer 2018 seems to reject them. (And no, Siniawer is not her "personal opinion" that got around the peer review of The Journal of Asian Studies: Cornell University Press is a perfectly good academic publisher.)

December update: Having now read Siniawer 2014, she definitely doesn't support the changes. 01:04, 20 December 2019 (UTC)

I am, however, willing to reconsider the above if a quotation from Siniawer that seems to contradict my interpretation of Siniawer 2018 could be provided.

As for Sato 2017, could one of the editors who claim to have read it (I see one above, User:Martinthewriter, directly making the claim, and the other, User:IvoryTower123, making a seemingly non-sequitur remark that the sources are "reliable", which assumes they say what they are cited as saying, and do not say anything that implies they agree with the above quotation from Siniawer 2018; assuming good faith, I guess IT123 has read the sources and takes it as a given that they verify the content, consequently changing the argument to whether they are "reliable") please provide the relevant quotations that they believe to support the present article content, as well as any information on whether they explicitly agree or disagree with the sentiment expressed in Siliawer 2018 that this notion of an ancient and unchanging "philosophy of mottainai" is problematic?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 05:26, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Furthermore, regardless of the general reliability of the 埼玉大学紀要, this source, written by a doctor of psychology (specializing in developmental psychology and early childhood education) and a teacher (?) at オイスカ上海日本語幼稚園 is definitely a sub-optimal source for the text Mottainai has been referred to as "a part of the Japanese religious and cultural heritage." It doesn't mention "religio-", "Buddhis-" or "Shinto" -- or even "spiritual-" or "animis-" -- anywhere else in its text, and even the source it cites for this background statement, Hirose, Y. (2008). Social Psychology on environmentally conscious behavior. Kyoto: Kitaohjishobou. (Japanese) is ... weird, since there about 8,000,000 Japanese-language titles that could theoretically be translated that way and "Hirose" is a transcription of at least 16 distinct Japanese family names (admittedly most of them probably only used by one or two households throughout the country) while "Y." is not very helpful, so the only thing that can be firmly established is that this was the publisher. Through some sleuthing I was able to find this title, which is almost certainly the one Shuto and Eriguna were using, but neither this Yukio Hirose nor this Yukio Hirose is not a scholar of religion, linguistics, history, or even Japanese literature/culture; the former he is a professor of psychology and the latter is a professor of natural science. (Given that the latter appears to write about coffee almost exclusively, I think the odds are that the editor of the volume in question is the former, but I've been unable to verify it.) (Sorry, I noticed that the 関大 bio actually lists the book as one of his edited volumes.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 06:44, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Here having stumbled across this dispute at a noticeboard. My understanding from having read the discussion above is that there is a disagreement as to whether we should describe the term mottainai as a Buddhist term; please let me know if this is not correct. On review of some of the edit history, and the discussion above, I have concerns about some of the sources being used. I would concur that while academic studies on pedagogy and psychology are interesting to many of us, they are not necessarily reliable for things outside those disciplines - including origins & history of terms such as mottainai. Have reviewed the Shuto reference, a study on childhood pedagogy (outside the appropriate fields of study); the supporting text there is in the "Background" section (which I would not consider reliable) and references Hirose, Y. (2008). Social Psychology on environmentally conscious behavior. (again outside the appropriate academic field). The same issue with academic fields holds true for Sato Yuriko's article in the Journal of Analytical Psychology. These sources are not reliable in this context. Before I trawl further through the edit history of the article, are there any other sources that I've missed? - Ryk72 ^talk 07:58, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I also consider that the Shuto & Eriguna source in isolation is not sufficient support for inclusion of content in the lead section (per WP:DUE); and that the lead should reflect the body of the article. - 08:10, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

@Ryk72: Thank you for stopping by! (And for the message you have apparently left on my talk page while I was writing this; I haven't read it yet.) As should be clear from the above, you and I are in basic agreement on "Shuto & Eriguna (2013)", which I have actually already removed based on the fact that it was cited (quoted) in the lead but not in the body. (I am refraining from reverting back entirely to the previous version, but potentially dubious content in the lead that isn't also verified in the body is a definite no-no. If one of the editors who disagree with me were to add it back to the body but not the lead, or both the body and the lead, I would not revert that pending consensus.)

Before my recent edits, there were basically four sources cited for the disputed text:

1. Shuto & Eriguna (2013)
2. Siniawer (2014)
3. Taylor (2015)
4. Sato (2017)

Of the above, I have disputed 1 and refuted 2 with another source by the same author that appears to contradict what we attribute to her. 3 is news to me (it appears to have been added in after a separate source, "Morrow & Izor (2015)", was found not to verify the content we attributed to it; I haven't checked the new source yet, but am naturally skeptical (an essay with the title "Material Flows: Human Flourishing And The Life Of Goods" sounds like an inappropriate source for a statement about medieval Japanese literature). 3 was found above to contradict the material it was cited for, and to in turn be contradicted by both its own cited source, and apparently to have taken the relevant information from Wikipedia. 4 is currently inaccessible to me, and I am requesting a more detailed quotation from the editor who claims he has read it.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:39, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I just noticed now, but the Sato article was also briefly discussed last year.[6] Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:45, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

I haven't misread any of the sources. I just didn't want to impose my personal views, so I just stuck with the literal reading of the relevant scholarship. The previous version only says "according to Yamaori Tetsuo", so the point is just to reflect his general viewpoint. I'm alright with your addition of "Eiko Maruko Siniawer said", though it was hardly necessary. This just demonstrates the importance of refraining from reverting as you just did. If you have tiny quibbles like this, the text can be tweaked a little without needing to delete much.​ ​ I'm familiar with Yamaori Tetsuo's writing, and of course he is a specialist scholar of religion, so I know that Eiko Maruko Siniawer did not misrepresent him, though I don't know why Hijiri88 is so mistrustful of all these scholars. Like I said, we should just adhere to the scholarly consensus and nothing more. The tagging of that source was definitely wrong, as was the tagging of Yuriko Sato, whose article was accurately represented. Many sources likewise cite sociologist Yuko Kawanishi, who is also a reputable scholar. As far as I know, the idea that mottainai is a Buddhist term is not in dispute. The ideas of Yamaori Tetsuo, Yuko Kawanishi, and Yuriko Sato are obviously well established. To be clear, I am fine with adding an alternative point of view, if you have a good source for it. I don't want the article to include only one opinion, but again, I haven't seen a reliable source arguing that mottainai is not a Buddhist term. The preponderance of peer-reviewed articles specifically dealing with mottainai demonstrate this, and there is no source countering this point of view.​ ​ Also, I don't agree with removal of Kevin Taylor's essay. You're disputing it based on your own opinion, but there is no reliable source disputing it. If necessary, we can say "in the opinion of Kevin Taylor", though that shouldn't be necessary.​ ​ I guess the best way forward from here is to seek a request for comment.Martinthewriter (talk) 22:16, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

You're disputing it based on your own opinion, but there is no reliable source disputing it. Kevin Taylor's essay is contradicted by his own cited source! McCullough is one of the most renowned scholars of Japanese classical literature in the history of the west. The tagging of that source was definitely wrong, as was the tagging of Yuriko Sato, whose article was accurately represented. Give me the quotation. You have given me many reasons not to take your word on the matter, and you have now been asked twice to provide a direct quotation. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:50, 13 November 2019 (UTC)

Moreover, you said above he was on horseback, the original source says "rode" and I asked you what you meant by "the original source", to which question you never responded. You have now also dodged two requests for quotations. Why this evasiveness?

I'll ask another question: you cited Taylor, initially as supporting the exact wording of the article from two years ago,[7] and then when it was pointed out to you you altered the wording accordingly; but why did you restore the exact wording from two years ago rather than summarizing what Taylor said? Do you own a copy of Taylor, or did you do a Google search for "mottainai Genpei Josuiki", take the first scholarly-looking source you could find, and tag it on to the Wikipedia text? I will admit upfront that I don't have a copy of Taylor and have been relying on the GBooks preview, but it looks very much like you have been too.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:30, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Kevin Taylor's essay was not contradicted by the source. I do of course own a copy of Taylor's book. You were interpreting the primary source in a very convoluted way, but the text itself, read literally, confirmed every detail of what Taylor wrote. We could if necessary write, "according to Kevin Taylor", but I checked the cited source myself and saw no error at all. Concerning the other point, Yuriko Sato says: "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". In order to gather more opinions on this subject, I have begun a request for comment below…Martinthewriter (talk) 21:52, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, and what sources does she cite? If the word first appeared in the Heike or the Seisuiki in the general sense "it would be a waste to throw your life away for a bow", then there is surely very little evidence that it originates as a Buddhist term. Sato, a psychiatrist, is not by herself a reliable source on Japanese historical linguistics or religious/literary history, and if she doesn't cite other scholarship then her sweeping statements on the matter are still not to be taken as fact, for the same reason as Shuto and Eriguna above. Anyway, I don't believe you when you say you own a copy of Taylor, and I don't believe you when you say you read Japanese scholarship. You obviously just Googled up a source that you thought would verify the content that had already been removed from the article per the consensus of editors that etymological details were not really relevant to an article about environmentalism. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:52, 14 November 2019 (UTC)

• Note I've started summarizing the contents of this source, which goes into much more detail on the etymology of the word than any of the above-cited English sources (I note that despite the user box on his user page, Martin seems unable or, worse, unwilling to cite Japanese-language scholarship). Nishidani appears above to believe that more detail on etymology and historical usages would be of use to this article. I don't necessarily agree (again, WP:NOTDICT -- this article should either be about contemporary environmentalism, or it should be a dictionary entry giving tremendous detail on the Japanese word mottainai, but it can't really be both without relying on ambivalent statements in reliable sources and otherwise highly dubious sources), but if it is going to go into etymological detail, then it should do so correctly with the best Japanese scholarship. (Most historical linguists and scholars of classical literature specializing in Japanese but working outside Japan are largely reliant on Japanese-language scholarship; read the bibliography of virtually any chapter of Seeds in the Heart and try to tell me I'm wrong.) Note that I did not deliberately stop before summarizing what Hasegawa says about why the meaning of the word changed because I am trying to hide something (he does talk about grains of rice), but just because it gets a lot more abstract from the beginning of section 5, and I'm a little too busy to try to figure out exactly what Wikipedia can say based on that (without essentially plagiarizing him by giving a straight translation of his entire original thesis) at the moment. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 04:07, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

I noticed the activity here since this page is still on my watchlist. Although I don't edit Wikipedia anymore, perhaps I could answer some of the objections to my previous points.
About whether 勿体 and/or 物体 are Buddhist terms. The objection being that they don't appear in dictionaries of Buddhist terms. That may be true, but 物体 at least does appear in Buddhist texts. For example, in the following passage from The Summary of the Great Vehicle (trans. John Keenan):

16. Are these defiled seeds identical with or different from the container consciousness? They are not different as if they were separate realities. But, although when joined [to the container consciousness] they are not different from it, yet they are not identical with it either. (PDF p. 20)

The original Chinese for that (where "realities" is 物體) can be seen here in the SAT Taishō database. While you are there, you can search for 物體 to find it in other texts, or click 物體 in the list of terms that appears to the left of the text when you select the passage. That brings up the following definition (enter "guest" and no password when it asks for your ID).

物體

Basic Meaning: essence of things
Senses:
Substance of things; being, state of being, existence, life ...

Form and state of matter; material body ...

So in this context at least, 物体 is exactly what it looks like – a term from Buddhist metaphysics. So sources that call it an old Buddhist word are not wrong.

Next, about whether "mottainai" itself is a Buddhist term. I don't think that's exactly what the sources are claiming. I am happy to see that the etymology section is back and think that it is pretty much satisfactory. No one is denying that the word has these meanings. What the sources are saying is that that Japanese attitudes toward waste, as expressed with this word, are influenced or informed by ideas like the Shinto approach to the natural world or Buddhist ideas about evanescence and the interdependence and intrinsic value of all things. I don't see why pointing this out elicits such an vehement reaction. To me it would be more surprising if Japanese attitudes toward waste had not be influenced by the central tenets of the two major religious traditions in the culture. So if editors want to cite sources that say so, they should be allowed to stand.

Also, BTW, no one is trying to hide anything by citing a JSTOR source. Anyone can register for a free JSTOR account that lets you view six articles a month. Just Google "JSTOR free account". – Margin1522 (talk) 09:27, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

So ... you read enough of the discussion to notice that I had used the word "paywall" twice, but didn't notice that I did not do so to insinuate that something was being "hidden"? Did you notice how all the sources being cited by MtW are being misquoted while you were at it? Also, if you don't edit Wikipedia anymore, why are you even here? Why not go violate copyright on some other website? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:35, 17 November 2019 (UTC)

Why am I here? That's a good question. One reason obviously was to report evidence that 物体 was indeed a Buddhist term, dating all the way back to the first translations of Buddhist texts from Sanskrit into Chinese. And it seems to me that there is a direct line from the original meaning "essence of things" to Hasegawa’s 物の本体 and 本体･本姿, which he regards as a primary meaning of 勿体. And the Buddhist monk that I quoted cites it again, putting it in terms that are compatible with Western philosophy, as "the suchness or intrinsic value of each thing". So when a source talks about it, I think we should take it seriously.

Another reason is to talk about respect. This controversy began when a group of expatriate editors living in Japan complained that the claims made in this article about Buddhist influence or the untranslatable Japaneseness of this expression didn’t agree with their experience. Namely that when Japanese people say "What a waste!" they mean the same thing as people from other countries. Well, OK, but I have been living in Japan for 40 years myself, and one of the things that strikes me about the culture is that people here treat other people (and things) with respect. This is mentioned by many of our sources, and by the monk I cited who said "Developing a sense of respect for all things is no small step in becoming an ethical human being..." It's also a suitable topic for say a Jungian psychologist (Sato) to take up. I don't think we should dismiss a source simply because the author isn't a linguist.

Also, about the conduct of this discussion, I originally got involved because I felt that some editors were not being treated with respect. I myself haven't been treated with respect. I was roundly mocked for quoting the monk, and then attacked for my writing style. I have explained elsewhere to Hijiri that as a professional editor I feel an obligation to respect the words of my author and to use them when possible. I also admitted that, while I believe that my paraphrasing style has been permissible, I can see how editors like Hijiri and Tony might not agree. So I said I would change it to use explicit inline attribution and quoting of salient phrases, which under the guidelines is a clearly permissible approach. I know that Hijiri saw that statement, and that he saw an example of that approach. And yet the attacks continue. I think I deserve more respect than that, and so do the other editors of this article. – Margin1522 (talk) 05:56, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

In case this conversation needs to continue later and I forget, I'm gonna leave this and this here. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:02, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you. I'm not in a position to give it much attention right now, but perhaps we can come back to it later. – Margin1522 (talk) 01:39, 29 November 2019 (UTC)

FWIW, I was also able to locate this (enter "guest" as the username with no password for 10 free searches in 24 hours), which says 物體 was used as a translation of bhāva in the 觀心覺夢鈔. Not sure how relevant that would be for a discussion of mottainai being a supposed "Japanese Buddhist concept", though: our best sources all either don't mention it or imply the "Japanese Buddhist concept" stuff is bogus nationalist rhetoric. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:49, 19 December 2019 (UTC)

So in this context at least, 物体 is exactly what it looks like – a term from Buddhist metaphysics. So sources that call it an old Buddhist word are not wrong. I think this is a little too much of a leap of original research. Using the same logic, we could perhaps say that 花, 人, 生, 子, and even 一, (all of which appear in the same passage) are Buddhist terms. There is also a significant gap between 物體 or 物体 and 勿体無い. And also gaps between Chinese translations of Sanskrit text and Japanese; and between Yogacara and Japanese Buddhism. - Ryk72 ^talk 23:40, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ryk72: I don't necessarily disagree. What I've been doing above is humoring someone who I, deep down, sincerely believe is not acting in good faith. The irony of the situation is that, while other editors can say things like that I call everyone who disagree[s] with [me] a troll, but in reality here (as at Talk:Korean influence on Japanese culture and Talk:Pontius Pilate's wife) I have fallen victim to my own tendency to treat AGF like a suicide pact. Below here, for example, I attempted to reason with Francis Schonken based on the assumption that he was here because of the RFC, was a good-faith actor and would listen to reason, and after a consistent barrage of non sequiturs and ad hominems (often coming so fast it seemed my comments weren't even being read) the frustration finally got to me. Margin1522, on the other hand, has been posting so infrequently that the obvious irrelevance of his commentary has not been enough on its own to make me lose my cool. Of course the etymology of the Chinese word 勿体 is only peripherally relevant to the Japanese word 勿体無い, and completely irrelevant to the "wasteful" meaning of the latter. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:58, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

The Sasaki "source"

Almost by accident, I read some of this essay. I quote: "We can gain a clearer perception of the mentality of Japanese people from the etymology of Japanese greetings." I cannot imagine a more beautiful encapsulation of precisely how language does not work. Imagine the equivalent article in reverse: "The etymology of goodbye is 'God be with you', demonstrating the all pervasive acknowledgment of the monotheistic deity of the Judaeo-Christian tradition in all English speakers." Frankly this is as big a collection of howlers as you could hope to find on the internet. Oh, but it's a "source"... Imaginatorium (talk) 12:13, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: Yes, I'd be happy to discuss the general reliability of the sources for the environmentalism-related content of the latter portion of this article, but right now the more pressing concern is the canvassing of "votes" in favour of the inclusion of patently false content based on a "source" that obviously contradicts itself and the removal of .

BTW, I don't know if you're aware of this, but when I was teaching English in Japanese junior high schools (until last year), "God be with you" was given as the etymology for "Goodbye" in the vocab list at the back of the 一年生 textbook -- the only etymology I recall appearing in that list.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:49, 18 November 2019 (UTC)

@Imaginatorium: Sorry, it seems on a recount I may have been including you in the supporters for "version C" in the above RFC (I cited "6" earlier today but now I can only find 5 -- I also might have counted either HAL or Ryk twice given the way each formatted their comments) -- your comment does imply you share similar views to Curly Turkey and Nishidani, and it does appear you came here because of the RFC and the stuff before it, so I do wonder if you would be interested in joining in the RFC. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 16:50, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Prof. Siniawer's name

Her maiden name is Eiko MARUKO (英子・丸子). She is married to musician Peter Siniawer, who is mentioned in the foreword to one of her books. So her first name is Eiko, and she uses a double last name, combining her maiden and married surnames. – Margin1522 (talk) 10:30, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I'm not so sure of this. "Maruko" 丸子 would be very uncommon Japanese family name. The linked source simply lists the professor's name as Eiko Maruko Siniawer / 英子・丸子・シナワ. It does not say that Maruko was her maiden family name. Other sources, including her profile at Williams College[8], Cornell University Press[9] and others[10] give only Siniawer as her family name. - Ryk72 ^talk 20:26, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Huh. Much of that is true; given that this pointy edit was clearly motivated more by a desire to deliver a "gotcha" to another Wikipedian than to fix our formatting of the author's name, I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out her surname actually was just "Siniawer" after all.

While "Maruko" is apparently a Japanese family name (similar to "Kaneko"), GScholar also lists her as "EM Siniawer"[11] and this book review gives her name as "Siniawer, Eiko Maruko", which would be pretty unusual for someone with a double last name. Ditto here and here. I can't find a single place she is cited explicitly with the surname "Maruko Siniawer" (i.e., somewhere where her name is given in full first, and subsequently she is referred to as "Maruko Siniawer", or where her name is listed as "Maruko Siniawer, Eiko" or "E. Maruko Siniawer" or the like). I don't disbelieve the claim that one of her books mentions her being married to a Peter Siniawer, but does it say anything about Maruko being her maiden name: the above-linked APJJF formats her name as though it's a middle name (see the Japanese orthographies for all the other names on the list), and while it is uncommon in Japan for people to have middle names, double surnames are also rare; her staff bio at Williams refers to her as "Siniawer", and while the URL and email imply that when she joined the faculty her name was simply "Eiko Maruko", the formatting on those emails is not consistent.[12]

Given the preponderance of evidence, I would say it is quite plausible that what Margin1522 says is true, but in such cases we should prioritize the wishes of the author herself as to how her name should be formatted. Unless a source can be located that cites her or discusses her biography or work and refers to her by the surname "Maruko Siniawer", I think we can probably assume that the Williams staff profile and the above-linked reviews/citations represent either (a) how she prefers to be cited or (b) evidence that most secondary and tertiary sources (i.e., us) assume her surname is "Siniawer" and she doesn't mind.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 23:29, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

Also, I'm not sure if the title of this section was meant to be ironic. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:58, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Siniawer's 2018 book (access)

I already gave the (linked) ISBN number of Siniawer's 2018 book above: clicking that link, and then clicking the links that appear on the Wikipedia page that appears after clicking the ISBN number can give access to the book, in whole or in part.

I received an e-mail relating to access to Siniawer's 2018 book. As a rule I don't reply off-line to Wikipedia-related e-mails I receive (don't bother sending them to me). For clarity: the access I use to Siniawer's 2018 book is https://books.google.com/books?id=bCVjDwAAQBAJ, so e.g. its 9th chapter, starting at p. 241: https://books.google.com/books?id=bCVjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA241 – if scrolling to the next page and it doesn't show up, sometimes manually changing the page number in the url helps (e.g. https://books.google.com/books?id=bCVjDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA242 for the second page of the 9th chapter, etc). --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:55, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

I was tempted to blank the above message. I am vaguely familiar with the process described myself, but describing, on-wiki, methods of getting around the Google Books preview restrictions to gain practically unlimited free access to copyrighted material seems questionable. I have received emails similar to the one described above myself (linking to copyvio PDFs) from editors I respect and trust (and didn't report), but doing so publicly on a Wikipedia talk page feels quite different. That being said, GBooks preview workarounds are also not the same thing as blatantly copyvio public uploads of whole books.

@Drmies and TonyBallioni: (my go-to experienced editors for copyvio EL issues and general copyvio, respectively) What do you make of this? (BTW -- happy holidays! Sorry, I don't do the Christmas message delivery thing, but I feel bad pinging people into unrelated discussions at this time of year without lampshading that.)

@Francis Schonken: It would probably be less questionable from a copyright standpoint for you to just quote the relevant passage, so if your motivation for posting the above was to avoid potential copyvio by posting the quote itself on-wiki, I would encourage you to seek a second opinion on the matter (like from one of the admins I just pinged).

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 09:36, 27 December 2019 (UTC)

Proposing introductory paragraph for "Etymology, usage, and translation" section

Proposing as first paragraph for the Mottainai#Etymology, usage, and translation section:

After the Second World War, the dominant meaning of the Japanese word mottainai is "waste" or "wasteful", indicating something that is being discarded needlessly, or to express regret at such a fact – something like: "what a waste!". Older and/or largely eroded definitions of the term, which has an elaborate history of varied meanings, illustrate, for instance, trouble, impropriety, disappointment or graciousness, and include meanings such as "awe-inspiring", "unworthy", "undeserving", "profane" and "sacrilegious". In the 1990s the word was used infrequently, while its connotations became more negative, shifting towards issues of waste management and valuing things. In that decade, its meaning was partially understood as "shabby", "dingy", or "stingy". In the 21st century, mottainai became a catch-all concept within expanding waste consciousness: by then, it encapsulated a wide range of connotations regarding waste, including concerns regarding waste proliferation and scarcity of resources, and regarding what was truly meaningful and valuable apart from financial gain. Waste consciousness proliferated via a wide spectrum of publications, including children's books, e.g. Mottainai Grandma.

References

Works cited

• Hasegawa, Kōhei (1983). "Mottai-nashi Kō". Academic Bulletin of Nagano University. 4 (3–4): 25–30. {{cite journal}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Siniawer, Eiko Maruko (2018). "We Are All Waste Conscious Now". Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. Cornell University Press. pp. 241–265 (and endnotes pp. 343–347). ISBN 9781501725852. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

--Francis Schonken (talk) 17:34, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

Further, while tentatively implementing the above in the article I saw that the current two first paragraphs of the Mottainai#Etymology, usage, and translation section, that is more than two thirds of that section, use only a single source, and, for that matter, one that is less suitable than the Siniawer 2018 source per WP:RSUE and WP:AGE MATTERS. I have tagged accordingly. --Francis Schonken (talk) 20:06, 28 December 2019 (UTC)

(i) Using a single source is not a problem if that source is considered to be reliable. I also checked most of what Hasegawa said against the sources he cited (Kōjien, Genpei Jōsuiki) and other secondary sources (Ōbunsha, for instance, also supports the Aritōshi content, and I also coulda sworn I saw another source -- not Taylor -- that said an early example appeared in the Jōsuiki).

The nuances of ONESOURCE are something I would expect to have to explain to someone whose articles are mostly copy-paste jobs, but Francis, you have over 50,000 edits to your name and have been here since 2004: why do I have to explain our sourcing policy to you?

(ii) If you want, I could add the other citations in (that is after all what Template:Sfnm is for), but to tag the section as reliant on a single source seems somewhat WP:POINTy when you know that is not the case (I told you further up that I had checked what he said against my 7th-edition copy of Kōjien[13] -- admittedly you claimed six hours later that you "didn't read" that message, but that is on you, not me or Hasegawa). I will therefore be removing the tag for the time being.

(iii) This will technically be my third revert of you on the article within the last 10 hours. However, if something like this happens again (or, for example, you modify your suggestion in the article space and forget to revert) within the next 14 hours, I would like it noted in advance that this is not edit-warring. The first revert was because I was assuming you understood that your new "version F" needs to get consensus on the talk page to replace the very popular status quo, and that, like this edit of mine, you did not intend for your unilateral rewrite to automatically become the new status quo without discussion, while this upcoming revert is to remove a maintenance tag that appears to have been placed by you as a good faith mistake -- you didn't read my comments in which I explained that I had consulted multiple sources.

(iv) Again, Hasegawa is not "less suitable" than Siniawer 2018, since Hasegawa 1983 goes into extensive detail on the etymology of the word (that's his whole point), while Siniawer 2018 does not. You have had to "read in" a significant amount of what you attribute to her -- "an elaborate history of varied meanings", for instance, is something you gleaned from my summary of Hasegawa (I would be correct in assuming you don't read Japanese, yes?). "In the 1990s the word was used infrequently" is also a distortion of the source's In the 1990s, what mentions there were of mottainai tended to imply... (Siniawer is not a linguist who went into corpus databases to establish that this common adjective was used less frequently in a particular decade [!?]; she is a historian who was talking about environmental awareness and wastefulness in that decade). Given this, I still think a specialist source specifically discussing the history of the word in detail would be much more suitable for our purposes, and so far the only such source any of us has located is Hasegawa 1983: your dismissal of this source is explicitly based on a misreading of NOTENG and AGEMATTERS, which I responded to above.

(v) All that being said, Siniawer 2014 (if we combine her with her cited source that gives the name of "a collection of tales") does actually contain something useful that should probably be included in addition to the material cited to Hasegawa 1983: The word's usage dates back to at least the early 13th century, when it was used in the Uji Shūi Monogatari. However, even then a single source that explicitly supports the content would be preferable to avoid the appearance of WP:SYNTH, so I'd say it would be a toss-up between "Siniawer 2014 / Matsumura, Yamaguchi, and Wada 1994" and this source (apparently a blog by pedagogy scholar Masao Amano that also cites a widely used dictionary, but unlike Siniawer explicitly gives the name and precise-ish date of the work, and probably unlike his own source explicitly says "『宇治拾遺物語』（1221年頃）" and "どうやら中世を起源とするものであったらしい". Note however that none of these examples contradict Hasegawa (or my text attributed to Hasegawa), who only says the somewhat later Jōsuiki is an example that is frequently cited of the word's historic usage ("「勿体ない｣については､『太平記』と『源平盛衰記』が必ず引証される｡").

(vi) In the 21st century, mottainai became a catch-all concept within expanding waste consciousness: by then, it encapsulated a wide range of connotations regarding waste, including concerns regarding waste proliferation and scarcity of resources, and regarding what was truly meaningful and valuable apart from financial gain. is not etymological information, and it is hardly relevant for usage, when 99.9% of instances where it is used almost certainly have nothing to do with environmentalism. (There is a reason Curly Turkey's proposal dated 10:32, 25 February 2018 involved separating that content from the brief "etymology" section and and devoting a separate section to it.)

(vii) The opening clause of the first sentence, as noted above, is ungrammatical. It was made thus as an attempt to salvage a sentence that originally consisted entirely of OR not supported by the source.

(viii) Older again is not supported directly by the source. Siniawer 2018 goes into hardly any detail on the etymology, and does not explicitly state that the "wasteful" sense is the most recently evolved.

(ix) largely eroded is a curious choice of wording: as both Hasegawa and the classic version C note, "awe-inspiring and unmerited/undeserved" is still seen quite frequently in newspapers and the like (and I'm not advocating for its inclusion in the article but I can readily use it at work and my coworkers will understand what I mean), but neither Siniawer nor Hasegawa says that it was ever a more common usage than "wasteful" (or more common than it is now).

(x) elaborate history is addressed in point (iv), as is In the 1990s the word was used infrequently, but while its connotations became more negative, shifting towards issues of waste management and valuing things is also something neither Siniawer 2018 nor any reputable source supports (the "wasteful" sense never had "positive" connotations; rather, Motowori and others condemned the "gratitude" sense specifically because of the word's negative connotations).

(xi) In that decade, its meaning was partially understood as "shabby", "dingy", or "stingy" is not supported by the source (which says, or at least implies, that a small sample of high school students surveyed selected those from a list of options that were presented by the survey, indicating that these "senses" were already in use).

(xii) The following sentence is addressed in point (vi) as being more relevant to the lower section, as it has almost nothing to do with etymology. However, I would further note that I already included essentially the same information (an apparent increase in interest in the idea of mottainai in early 21st-century Japan) in that section (attributed to Siniawer's own peer-reviewed 2014 article), so your addition is not only off-topic but redundant.

(xiii) Waste consciousness proliferated via a wide spectrum of publications, including children's books, e.g. Mottainai Grandma. is even more off-topic than that addressed in (vi) and (xii), and also flows -- if I may be forgiven for speaking frankly -- terribly into the following paragraphs, which are a more careful scholarly study of the history of the word written in roughly chronological order.

(xiv) The problem of flow and chronological ordering applies pretty much to the whole paragraph, which is focused almost exclusively on supposed 20th- and 21st-century "developments" (again, actually misreadings of a non-specialist who never edits Japan-related articles except when it involves Nishidani or myself), but which precedes a more detailed breakdown of the history of the word in the medieval, early modern, and pre-war periods.

(xv) The following paragraph, as haphazardly mushed together in this rewrite (something not mentioned at all in the above post), now bombards the reader with technical terms and titles of works like classical Japanese, terminal form, mottainashi, Kōjien, Daigenkai, motaina, Noh, Aritōshi, etc., with no room to "breath".

(xvi) Mottainai is the classical Japanese terminal form mottainashi. is complete gibberish (mottainashi is the classical Japanese terminal, or "dictionary", form, while mottainai is the modern Tokyo dialect terminal, or dictionary, form), and is not supported by the cited source (the fact is WP:BLUE in Japanese academia, and mottainai and mottainashi are used interchangeably by writers like Hasegawa when talking of the etymology of the modern word; an example of a source that verifies it explicitly is Kōjien, although of course "terminal form" comes from classical Japanese grammars written in English, like, if I recall correctly, McCullough 1988 -- Japanese works say 終止形).

(xvii) A form of the word, motaina (モタイナ) appears in the late-14th or early-15th century Noh play Aritōshi [ja], apparently in a sense close to the original meaning of the word, i.e., "inexpedient or reprehensible towards a god, buddha, noble or the like". is an extremely overwritten and jam-packed sentence, again the result of half a paragraph being crammed into a single sentence. As I said above (at 11:09, 28 December 2019), this makes it "impenetrable to our readers". Moreover, your copying out my word-for-word translation of Kōjien's definition and juxtaposing it with your own quotation (practically plagiarism) of Siniawer's translations (some creative and dubious, apparently meant by her to cover all possible translations of the same three basic sentences given in Ōbunsha) is likely to confuse readers ("Which of awe-inspiring, unworthy, undeserving, profane and sacrilegious does inexpedient or reprehensible towards a god, buddha, noble or the like correspond to?").

(xviii) Kōhei Hasegawa [ja], then a professor at Nagano University, writes about is ungrammatical -- why did you change it? The only thing you needed to change about that sentence was changing the original meaning, the one given a (1) in Kōjien, became less prominent to this original meaning became less prominent to make it read better as you had quoted said definition immediately before this and not referred directly to other definitions since the preceding paragraph. But you didn't even change that: you clumsily excised the one given a (1) in Kōjien while leaving intact the "the" in the original meaning.

(xix) Your ultimately quoting all three of my translations of Kōjien (or, rather, Hasegawa's quotations of an earlier edition to Kōjien I don't have direct access to) makes your whole exercise of removing the DICDEFs seem redundant -- now the section contains two paragraphs that each cite different translations of the definitions given in two Japanese dictionaries that, in the original Japanese, are practically identical, so that it seems like what we are doing is collecting variant translations of different definitions of the word.

(xx) Replacing an opening sentence that cites Kōjien with an opening sentence that indirectly cites Ōbunsha generally feels like a bad idea, and should not be done without a very good reason. Kōjien is universally considered one of the most authoritative dictionaries, if not the most authoritative dictionary, of the Japanese language, and anyone who has read another article on Japanese linguistics is likely to feel much more "comfortable" or "at home" with the current opening of version C than with the proposed version F. If you read Siniawer's original text in the JOAS, it's obvious that her main motivation for selecting the citation she did was to say "the word dates to at least the early 13th century, when it appeared in the Uji Shūi Monogatari, which fact is not found in Kōjien: this is not the case with the proposed text, so a different reasoning would be needed.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:06, 29 December 2019 (UTC) (expanded with point-by-point critique 05:16, 29 December 2019 (UTC) )

Actually, since you appear to now be nitpicking what Hasegawa says, I should probably place more emphasis on this: Do you read Japanese? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:39, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

TL;DR – The problem is that the article is out of balance (as a WP:NPOV issue, see e.g. WP:BALASPS of that core content policy, "An article ... should strive to treat each aspect with a weight proportional to its treatment in the body of reliable, published material on the subject"), being proportionally too much skewed towards 20th-century Japanese scholarship, while detailed 21st-century English-language scholarship is available. The article should be tagged accordingly, until the issue is resolved. And no: the 20th-century Japanese scholarship only *partially* overlaps with 21st-century English-language scholarship, so it is indeed a NPOV issue to go in detail w.r.t. 20th-century Japanese scholarship, in several consecutive paragraphs, for a large part with content that is not contained in 21st-century English-language scholarship, and then leave whatever content that is only covered by 21st-century English-language scholarship almost completely out of the article. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:08, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

(edit conflict) If you think the problem is WEIGHT, then the burden is on you to expand the other sections, not butcher the etymology section with a bunch of OR (viii, ix, x, xi), ungrammatical (vii, xviii) and poorly written (xiii, xiv, xv, xvii, xix) prose, and utter nonsense (xvi). I assumed you had during the last six weeks gotten around to reading the discussion you originally commented on but in case you still haven't, I was the one advocating for an etymology discussion of at most two sentences ("version b"). Unfortunately, with Curly Turkey and Margin not commenting I had become the only one defending that position (SMcCandlish called it a hatchet-job on a lot of proper content, and so I conceded and followed Nishidani's suggestion and did the work. Now you are doing no work, but rather devoting your every energy to attacking and tearing down my work, for apparently no reason. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:42, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Hijiri88: the basic problem remains that despite your repeated misgivings about Siniawer not being correctly represented in the article, you seem unable to produce an appropriate summary of that material. That's something I remarked way up above on this page, and is still valid to this day. Either you can't, or you won't, it is however not helping the content of this article. My summary above may benefit from some further tweaking, but not being able to produce *any* summary of that material is much worse for Wikipedia – so here is the challenge I put before you: make a decent summary of the 9th chapter in Siniawer's 2018 book, proportionally in balance with material as e.g. covered in Hasegawa 1983. Can you do that? Thanks. --Francis Schonken (talk) 08:22, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

the basic problem remains that [you are expressing] repeated misgivings about Siniawer not being correctly represented in the article Siniawer's thesis on the nihonjinron and "Buddhist origin" stuff that is the subject of the present discussion was accurately and sufficiently summarized in this edit. I have not mentioned this since: you are the one who is endlessly harping omm this non-issue. you seem unable to produce an appropriate summary of that material Don't you ever dismiss my ability to write articles again. I have been doing virtually all the work in building this article, while you did nothing but attack me and my work on this talk page for over a month, and then when you finally edited the article your edit was filled with OR (viii, ix, x, xi), ungrammatical (vii, xviii) and poorly written (xiii, xiv, xv, xvii, xix) prose, and utter nonsense (xvi). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 08:42, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: In brief summary, what is the viewpoint or aspect that is not sufficiently represented? For mine, it is the central point of Siniawer's 2014 work, that there was a deliberate "rebranding" of "Mottainai" at the beginning of the 21st century. - Ryk72 ^talk 08:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Ryk72: My summary above summarizes the first four paragraphs of the 9th chapter of Siniawer 2018. The first two sentences of that summary, regarding the pre-1990s situation, apparently overlap with content found in Hasegawa 1983 (so both sources are used to confirm that content). The next three sentences of that summary are apparently only found in Siniawer 2018, and are particularly relevant for a 21st-century understanding of the word, that is: much more relevant than obsolete usages of the word, currently profusely detailed in the article, based on Hasegawa 1983. That is an imbalance.

Hasegawa 1983 has (of course) nothing about the "rebranding" of "Mottainai" at the beginning of the 21st century. Siniawer 2014 and 2018 can both be used for that, with a slight preference for the latter, while this later publication offers a broader perspective than the 2014 article, is more recent (WP:AGE MATTERS), and, as added benefit in a WP:V logic, is more accessible to verify content (i.e. more editors can *verify* whether the Wikipedia article gives an appropriate summary). Per WP:BALASPS Siniawer's 21st-century publications on the topic should get, *anyhow*, at least as much bandwidth in the Wikipedia article as Hasegawa 1983. Where the content of Japanese and English-language publications on the topic overlaps, both should be used as reference.

The problem remains with Hijiri88 not relinquishing their hold on the article (Hijiri88 has reverted three different editors in the last 10 days) – so it is more than time you recognising WP:QUACK: whatever this editor says about recognising consensus or not, they only recognise one consensus, and that is their own, imposed with whatever means they think appropriate (even if these means include questionable tactics objectively transgressing Wikipedia's behavioural policies). Thus, they attack a decent summary as the one I gave above, on whatever shallow and incorrect grounds they can find.

So, my invitation remains: it is high time Hijiri88 produces a decent summary of Siniawer 2018, or stop blocking others who add such summary to the article. Tx. --Francis Schonken (talk) 09:42, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

The problem remains with Hijiri88 not relinquishing their hold on the article (Hijiri88 has reverted three different editors in the last 10 days) I have reverted none of Nishidani's edits, nor Malerooster's, nor SMcCandlish's, Imaginatorium's, or Lugnuts's. Heck, I didn't even revert your edit because it was crap (it was, but I didn't figure that out until I did a detailed analysis this morning): I reverted both you and Margin1522 for purely procedural reasons. If you make the above terrible edit again, I will revert you for a different reason. Also, please stop posting personal attacks like the above—I have been trying my damnedest to focus on content, but you have been ignoring me (and flouting that fact with your constant refrain of "TL;DR") while instead sticking in constant jabs at me as a person. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:14, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

BTW, I will ask you one final time to stop referring to your above garbage edit as superior to my far more careful edit as you do in your third paragraph. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 10:17, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Please write your summary of the Siniawer 2018 source, that seems the most constructive step forward afaics. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:17, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

I did. If you think there's other stuff from Siniawer that needs to be included in the etymology section (apart from this of course -- you forced me to write that for you, but if you can improve on it I'd welcome you to do so), then you need to so -- in a manner that isn't filled with OR, poor writing, and utter nonsense. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:58, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

No, that's Siniawer 2014 (not Siniawer 2018). I invite you to write a summary of Siniawer 2018 (which is not identical to Siniawer 2014, see above). --Francis Schonken (talk) 12:08, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

@Francis Schonken: The (bulk of) the quoted material appears verbatim in the 2018 chapter.[14] (The supporting material/examples I summarized are also largely the same, but that obviously can't be proven with a GBooks link.) She replaced "a contribution to the world" with "an aspect of the country's identity" (which in context is the same thing, just redacted for a more mass-market book audience). I would be happy to add a footnote explaining that In a reworking as a chapter for her 2018 book Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan, Siniawer wrote "an aspect of the country's identity". or even just replace the citation entirely. (Siniawer 2018 makes my point -- that Siniawer argued against the view expressed in version A -- better than Siniawer 2014, so I'd be happy to replace it if you would be. Ctrl+F this page for "peer-reviewed" to see why I would be reluctant to make that change myself without the express permission of either you or someone else !voting for version A.) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 12:36, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

FS, Thank you. I agree that those aspects are not found in Hasegawa, and that they are important aspects that should be included. There was, however, something that struck me as discordant about the proposed text, and I struggled to put my finger on it until just now - I think it's that we jump backwards in time and forwards in time again - post-WW2, ancient, 1990s, 2000s - and that breaks the narrative flow of the text. Would prefer if we were to have a time based order; though that may seem to give more emphasis on the ancient, I think this can be resolved through calling out the more important aspects in the lead. Thoughts? - Ryk72 ^talk 10:59, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Re. "jump backwards in time and forwards in time again" – correct, and that was one of many reasons why I could not consider it a "version" (as I said above), it is only a first (and thus far *incomplete*) step in getting a more equitable treatment of the Hasegawa and Siniawer sources. --Francis Schonken (talk) 11:17, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

You've spent weeks complaining about version C. Are you telling us that in those weeks you have not managed to write more than an "incomplete" version of a few paragraphs to summarize a book chapter of 25 pages? How many months is this going to take? And do I have to put up with you insulting and harassing me throughout the entire process? Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 11:58, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

I hesitate to ask this, but if the above is incomplete, what is the ultimate intended fate of the rest of the Hasegawa-, Rüttermann- and Ives-cited material? Does it all have to go? That will definitely need to be run by all the people who explicitly supported its inclusion in the article. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 00:50, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Support the most recent changes proposed by Francis Schonken, at least as far as the first paragraph goes. I particularly support the in-text references to Mottainai Grandma, which ideally I would expand upon even further. In the long run, it does seem though that a lot of the fixes being proposed to this article will require individual request for comments in order to resolve. What I especially would like to see is information from Yuriko Sato's article added back into the article, including the Shintoist significance of mottainai. It was included in both Versions A and C from the previous RFC, but it was deleted despite overwhelming consensus. In the future, we may need to do RFCs on every section, sentence-by-sentence, and make sure that those RFCs get officially closed so that no one can ignore them. This process could take years to complete, but it could be the only way to ensure the whole article represents consensus.Martinthewriter (talk) 22:07, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

Yuriko Sato is a psychoanalyst, a noble profession certainly, and the article appeared in the Journal of Analytical Psychology, a noble publication certainly, but she is not a linguist nor a scholar of religion. - Ryk72 ^talk 23:08, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I've posted a diff of the above comment on the ANI thread -- there's no way a rational, good-faith actor would post something like the above, especially when Martinthewriter is still pushing the idea that there is "consensus" for this version that is irreconcilable with the proposed change (which includes a lot of content taken from version C, which Martin is quite openly opposed to). Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:10, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

I don't think we should use the standard of allowing only sources by linguists and scholars of religion, because that would limit us too much. I don't think many people object to using Siniawer as a source, but she is clearly not a linguist or scholar of religion. I'm okay with occasionally using the somewhat dated source by Hasegawa, but Hasegawa is not a linguist or scholar of religion. Like Siniawer and Hasegawa, Sato is not a linguist or scholar of religion, but she is a respected academic who has written a specialized and up-to-date research paper on the subject of mottainai. As such, Sato remains our single best source on mottainai. Besides, the exact same information on the Shinto connections of mottainai is available from plenty of other sources already mentioned earlier on this talk page. If the current RFC does not get closed with consensus, I think we should start with another RFC specifically dealing with this source. I think part of the reason why the previous consensus was ignored was because the RFC dealt with too much at once. For the next RFC, we might also want to limit each participant to 1, or if necessary 2, posts per person. That way everyone can get their opinion in without being drowned out.Martinthewriter (talk) 02:40, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

@Martinthewriter: Interesting timing. Anyway, you must understand that central to the objection to using sources not written by people with training in either historical linguistics or history of religion is the fact that the content you have been attempting to add is focused very much on those fields while the sources you have been using are not written by specialists in those fields. Hasegawa and Siniawer, on the other hand, are in the present article text being cited for essentially uncontroversial content, not WP:EXTRAORDINARY claims that contradict established linguistic consensus (that the oldest meaning is inexpedient or reprehensible towards a god, buddha, noble or the like) and the basic tenets of Buddhism ("regret over wastefulness"). Moreover, Hasegawa appears to be getting the most critical information from Noma, a professor of Japanese language and literature at the second most prestigious university in Japan, whereas Shuto and Eriguna cite as their source Yukio Hirose, who is a specialist in "環境心理学、社会心理学". Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:01, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

It's not very clear that this is controversial among scholars. I know that it's controversial here, but this is purely a Wikipedia-based dispute. No scholar has yet been found who actually disagrees with what Sato and all the others are saying. Again, we shouldn't just ignore this scholarly consensus in favor of our own ideas. I felt that this circumstance was repeatedly emphasized by many users in the current RFC. I do think that ultimately we'll need another more-focused RFC to settle this issue definitively. However, perhaps it's still possible that some sort of consensus will arise from the last RFC, so if that's going to be closed one day, we might be better off waiting until that one is closed.Martinthewriter (talk) 16:58, 11 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't know what Sato actually says, but Siniawer very clearly disagrees with what you are citing Sato as saying. After all your other sources were found to be misrepresented, you have apparently now honed in on Sato because it's the last source none of us have access to. So it ultimately doesn't matter if Sato agrees with your personal opinion: you have drained too much of the community's good will at this point for us to believe you.

BTW, would you advocate for restoring the status quo pending closure of the RFC?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 07:48, 12 January 2020 (UTC)

Ryk72 (talk · contribs) has kindly directed me to a GBooks preview of at least the first page of the Sato article (which is where the cited content appears). Reading a few lines down from the sentence that version A takes out of context, we can clearly see that the "Buddhist origin" that is being referred to is that of mottai, not of mottainashi. Hasegawa goes into more detail on the relationship between this root word that is not the subject of our article and the compound word that is, and Hasegawa is therefore less open to misinterpretation and abuse than is Sato. Anything in Sato that is not quoted out of context and isn't covered better in any of our other sources is, of course, welcome to be added to the article, but removing the actual history of the word mottainai in favour of a misquotation of a vague passage in a non-specialist source in order to drive home in our readers a conclusion that none of our best sources actually make is of course unacceptable. (Or perhaps we should call it "reprehensible towards the gods and buddhas"?) Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:57, 13 January 2020 (UTC)

Yuriko Sato says unambiguously, "Mottainai is originally a Buddhist term, but it also has ties with Shinto". There's no need to impose our own creative interpretation on the plain facts. The word is of Buddhist etymology and Shintoist significance. All the available sources agree on this point. Siniawer likewise at no point denies either the Buddhist etymology or Shintoist significance of the word. I can see you still maintain that Siniawer does somehow deny this, but there is no passage at all to support that conclusion, and numerous other users have already mentioned that you appear to be misreading Siniawer's words. The only thing I support is the scholarly consensus and the consensus of the RFC, which is to use Yuriko Sato and similar sources to discuss the Buddhist and Shintoist significance of the word mottainai.Martinthewriter (talk) 01:42, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

Your previous misrepresentations (what you did to Siniawer was a borderline BLP violation) were addressed long ago, and the article already addresses the "Buddhist origin" stuff you keep harping on. Do not post on this talk page again unless you have something new to add. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 01:46, 19 January 2020 (UTC)

The current article doesn't say anything at all about the Buddhist etymology of the word mottainai, which is indeed a startling omission given that all the reliable sources do discuss this. There is also nothing in the article about the Shintoist significance of the word. It's wrong for this article to ignore such an overwhelming and uncontested scholarly consensus, particularly if the exclusion is all based on a misreading of Siniawer's article. If the RFC doesn't break this deadlock definitively, the best solution is to split the article into sentence-by-sentence RFCs and see what the consensus opinion is on each individual part, particularly the information from Yuriko Sato which the large majority of commentators on this talk page do want included.Martinthewriter (talk) 22:05, 24 January 2020 (UTC)

Sato, a psychotherapist, is, respectfully, outside her field. - Ryk72 ^talk 06:00, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

"Genpei Jōsuiki"

Okay, so the fact that Taylor said his account came from the the Genpei Jōsuiki[15] but his source was a translation of the related but different Heike Monogatari[16] really bothered me. Thing is, these centuries-old texts are all in the public domain (although digitized versions of individual manuscripts are sometimes difficult to find -- both McCullough and the more recent Tyler use the famous Kakuichi-bon, which is not apparently available in its entirety on J-Texts). However, an apparently popular text used for high school kokugo classes can be found online, and the word used there is not mottai-nashi but kuchi-oshi/kuyashi (口惜し). (Search also the Takano-bon for "をして、「口惜（くちをし）き御事（おんこと）" or the Ryūkoku-bon for "をして、「口惜（くちをし）（くちおし）き御事（おんこと）" The Genpei story, cited by Hasegawa, is apparently a completely different story. The story is given below in its entirety, taken from here:

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平氏嫌手向付通盛請小宰相局事 同五日備中守師盛、平内兵衛清家、大臣殿へ参給て、御方の兵共兼夜討有べき共不存之間、暁までとて休伏たる処に、源氏等如法夜半に推寄て散々に懸廻せば、不思寄俄事にて、我先々々にと落失ぬ。山手ゆゝしき大事の所に候、猶も手を向らるべきにて候と被申ければ、大臣殿浅増き事にこそとて、安芸右馬助基康を使にて、方々へ被仰けれども、面々に辞退申さる。能登殿へ被仰けるは、三草山既に夜討に被破ぬと申、一谷をば貞能、家仲に仰付ぬれば、さり共と存ず、生田をば新中納言、本三位中将固候ぬれば心安覚ゆ、山の手には盛俊を遣しぬれ共、大事の所と承はれば心苦しく存る間、なほ手を向ばやと思侍るに、兵共が、大将軍一人もおはしまさでは悪かりなんと歎申に付て、人々に申せば、何の殿原も、悪所なれば向はじと申合する、如何し侍べき、且は身々の御大事也、被向候て兵共をも御下知あれかしと被仰たり。能登守の返事には、軍は相構て我一人が大事と存じて振舞だにも、時の臨悪き様の事多し、其に心々にて、悪所をば、不行不固と嫌、善方へは向はん守らんと申されんには、遂によかるべし共覚えず、悪所とて被簡、兵の命を惜にこそ、身をたばはんには軍場へ向ぬには不如、源平東西に諍て、命を限の軍なれば身命を惜むべからず、死はいつも同事也、人々の強し悪しとて嫌給処をば教経に預給へ、幾度も可固候、御心安く思召とて、能登殿は三草山へぞ被向ける。誠に由々敷ぞ聞し。越中前司盛俊が仮屋の前に仮屋打て、敵を今や／＼とぞ待懸たる。然程に五日も既に暮にけり。源氏の大手は、昆陽野に陣を取て遠火を焼。平家は生田森に陣を取て向火を合す。彼方此方の篝火を、更行儘に見渡せば、晴たる天の星の如、沢辺の蛍に似たりけり。越前三位通盛は、旅の仮屋にて物具脱置て、小宰相局と申女房を船より被迎たり。何も会夜の度毎に、眤言尽ぬ中なれば、短き春の夜のうらめしさは、丑みつ計に成にけり。能登守は、宵程は骨なしと覚して不被申けるが、既に夜半も過ければ、高らかに、此手をば強方とて人々も辞申されつれ共、教経向へと候へば罷向ぬ、所の体を見に誠にこはかるべし、後は山々なれ共、平地にして下透たれば馬の馬場と云べし、前は海なれ共遠浅にて、船付わるくして船を難出、去ば敵後の山より跋と落さば、鎧を著たり共甲を不著、弓を取たり共矢をはげんに暇あるまじ、去ばこそ新三位中将も、西の山口をば落れけめ、帯紐解広げて思事なくおはする事 勿体なし 、女房の悲も子の糸惜も、身の豊なる時の事也、自然の事あらば如何はし給べき、其上九郎冠者は謀賢者にて、今もや夜討に攻来らん、御心得有べしと被申ければ、三位げにもと被思ければ、衣々に起別て、船へぞ被返送ける。三位討れて後にこそ是を最後と被泣けれ。

The word actually appears elsewhere on that page:

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公朝時成関東下向付知康芸能事 東国北国の乱逆によつて、東八箇国の正税官物、此三箇年進送なし。平家都を落ぬと聞給て、鎌倉より千人の兵士をさして済進せられけるに、舎弟に蒲御曹司範頼、九郎御曹司義経上洛と聞ゆ。京よりは北面に候ける橘内判官公朝、藤左衛門尉時成二人、木曾が狼藉法住寺の合戦、御所の回禄申さん為に、夜を日に継で下向す。範頼義経兄弟共に、熱田大郡司の許に御座すと聞えて、橘内判官推参して此由を申。九郎御曹司宣けるは、年貢運上の為に、鎌倉殿の使節として範頼義経上洛の処に、木曾が狼藉御所の焼失、浮説に依て承侍り、又関東より大勢攻上と聞て、木曾今井四郎兼平に仰て、鈴鹿、不破二の関を固と聞る間、兵衛佐に申合ずして、木曾が郎等と軍すべきに非、仍閭巷の説に付て、飛脚を鎌倉へ立候ぬ、其返事に随はん為に暫し爰に逗留す、されば別の使有べからず、御辺馳下て巨細を可被申と宣ければ、橘内判官熱田より鎌倉へ下向す。俄の事成ける上、法住寺の軍に下人共も逃失てなかりければ、子息に橘内所公茂とて、十五歳に成ける小冠者を具足して関東に下著す。兵衛佐殿見参して、木曾が狼藉法住寺殿焼失、委是を申。兵衛佐殿大に驚申されけるは、木曾奇怪ならば、蒙勅定誅すべし、知康が申状に依て合戦の御結構、 勿体なく 覚、知康不執申ば御所の焼失あるべからず、斯る輩を仙洞に被召仕者、向後も僻事出来べし、壱岐判官が所行、返々不思議に候、木曾義仲は重代の武者、当家の弓取也、北面の輩流石不可及敵対歟、依一旦我執及仙洞回禄之条、驚承処也。所詮義仲に於ては追討時刻を不可廻と。壱岐判官は是をば角とも不知して、兵衛佐殿に、法住寺の合戦の事申ん為に鎌倉へ下向。佐殿は是を聞給て、侍共に、知康が云いれん事不可執次と誡仰られければ、知康近習の侍と覚しき者、ことにうでくび把て、やゝ申候はん／＼と彼此に云けれ共、誰も聞入る者なし。日数も積ければ、侍推参して候けり。兵衛佐は簾中より見出して坐しけるが、子息左衛門督頼家の、未少く十万殿と申ける時招寄給て、あの知康は九重第一の手鼓と、一二との上手ときく。是にて鼓と一二と有べしといへとて、手鼓に、砂金十二両取副て奉り給たれば、十万殿是を持て、簾中より出て知康にたびて、一二と鼓と有べしと勧給ければ、知康畏て賜て、先鼓を取て、始には居ながら打けるが、後には跪き、直垂を肩脱て様々打て、結句は座を起て、十六間の侍を打廻て、柱の本ごとに無尽の手を踊し躍したり。宛転たり。腰を廻し肩を廻して打たりければ、女房男房心を澄し、落涙する者も多かりけり。其後又十二両の金を取て云、砂金は我朝の重宝也、輙争か玉に取べきと申て懐中する儘に、庭上に走下て、同程なる石を四とり持て、目より下にて、片手を以数百千の一二を突、左右の手にて数百万をつき、様々乱舞しておう／＼音を挙て、よく一時突たりければ、其座に有ける大名小名、興に入てゑつぼの会也けり。兵衛佐も見給て、誠鼓とひふとは名を得たる者と云に合て、其験ありけりとて感じ入給へり。鼓判官と呼れけるも理也。などひふ判官とはいはざりけるやらん、とまで宣けり。其後始て被見参たり。知康は可然事に思て合戦の次第を語申けれ共、佐殿兼て聞給たりければ、此段には其気色不可然して、是非の返事なければ、知康見参はし奉たれ共、竿を呑すくみてぞ在ける。され共人は能の有べき事也。知康をば、さしも憤深思はれて勘当の身也けるに、鼓と一二と二の能に依て、兵衛佐見参し給けるぞやさしく有難き。知康はさても有べきならねば、上洛せんとて稲村まで出たりけるが、能々案じて、都へ上たりとても、今は君に召仕へ奉らん事有難とて道より引返し、忍て鎌倉に居たりけるとかや。

My classical Japanese is not great, and my wakan-konkō is even worse, so I'm not going to attempt to read or translate either of the above two narratives in their entirety, but it should be obvious to anyone who can use Ctrl+F that the famous "Dropped Bow" (弓流) narrative is not the same story as either of them -- 弓 appears only once in each. In fact I will admit that I am not an expert on the Jōsuiki, but I cannot find the the 弓流 narrative in the J-Texts edition of that work; those two characters do not appear in sequence anywhere, nor do "弓な" nor "ゆみな", which seems odd because one of the points noted in the dating of the work is its emphasis on Yoshitsune relative to the more famous text. Is it possible the narrative does not actually appear in the work at all?

So, can people please stop inserting the apparently false claim that the narrative about Yoshitsune dropping his bow as it appears in the Genpei Jōsuiki uses the word mottainai?

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 14:16, 15 November 2019 (UTC)

Okay, so thanks to this wiki, I finally located it:

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屋島合戦付玉虫立扇与一射扇事 屋島には、伝内左衛門尉成直が伊予国へ越、河野四郎通信を攻けるが、通信をば討遁して、其伯父福良新三郎以下の輩、百六十人が頸を切つて、姓名注して進せたりけるを、内裏にて首実験かわゆしとて、大臣殿の御所にて実験あり。大臣殿は、小博士に清基と云者を御使にて、能登殿へ被仰けるは、源九郎義経、既に阿波国あまこの浦に著たりと聞ゆ、定て終夜中山をば越候らん、御用意あるべしと被申。去程に夜も明ぬ。屋島より塩干潟一隔、武例高松と云所に焼亡あり。平家の人々、あれや焼亡焼亡と云ければ、成良申けるは、今の焼亡誤にあらじ、源氏所々に火を懸て焼払と覚えたり、敵は六万余騎の大勢と聞、御方は折節無勢也、急御船に召、敵の勢に随て、船を指寄指寄御軍あるべし、侍共は汀に船を用意して、内裏を守護して戦べしと計申ければ、可然とて、先帝を奉始、女院二位殿以下女房達、公卿殿上人、屋島惣門の渚より御船にめさる。去年一谷にて被討漏たる人々也。前内大臣宗盛、前平中納言教盛、前権中納言知盛、修理大夫経盛、前右衛門督清宗也。小松少将有盛、能登守教経、小松新侍従忠房已下、侍共は城中に籠れり。大臣殿父子は一船に乗給たりけるが、右衛門督も鎧著て打立んとし給けるを、大臣殿大に制して、手を引いて例の女房達の中へ座しけるこそいつまでと無慙なれ。同廿日卯時に、源氏五十余騎にて、屋島の館の後より責寄て鬨を発す。平家も声を合て戦。判官は紺地の錦の直垂に、紫坐滋鎧に、鍬模打たる白星甲に、滋紅幌懸て、二十四指たる小中黒征矢に、金作の太刀を帯、滋籐の弓真中取、黒馬の太逞に白覆輪の鞍を置、先陣に進で、馬に白沫かませ軍の下知しけり。武蔵三郎左衛門尉有国、城の木戸の櫓にて大音声を揚て、今日の大将軍は誰人ぞと問。伊勢三郎義盛歩出して、穴事も疎や、我君は是清和帝の九代後胤、八幡太郎義家に四代の孫、鎌倉右兵衛権佐殿御弟、九郎大夫判官殿ぞかしと云。有国是を聞て大に嘲、故左馬頭義朝が妾、九条院雑司常葉が腹の子と名乗て、京都に安堵し難かりしかば、金商人が従者して、蓑笠笈背負つゝ、陸奥へ下し者の事にやといへば、伊勢三郎腹を立て、角申は北国砥波山の軍に負て山に逃入、辛命生て、乞食して這々京へ上ける者也。掛忝く舌の和なる儘に角な申しそ、さらぬだに冥加は尽ぬる者ぞ、甲斐なき命も惜ければ、助させ給へとこそ申さんずらめと云。有国は我君の御恩にて、若より衣食に不乏、何とて可乞食、東国の者共は、党も高家も跋跪こそ有しか、金商人と云をだに舌の和なる儘と云、況や年来の重恩を忘、十善帝王に向進て悪口吐舌は如何有べき、就中汝が罵立耳はゆし、伊勢国鈴鹿関にて朝夕山立して、年貢正税追落、在々所々に打入、殺賊強盗して妻子を養とこそ聞、其は有し事なれば諍所なしと云。金子十郎家忠進出て申けるは、雑言無益也、合戦の法は利口に依ず、勇心を先とす、一谷の戦に、武蔵相模の兵の勢は見給けん、それよりは只打出て組や／＼と云処に、家忠が弟に金子与一引儲て、有国が頸骨を志て射たりけるに、有国甲を合立たりければ、胸板にしたゝかに中る。矢風負て後は言戦は止にけり。東国之輩九郎判官を先として、土屋小次郎義清、後藤兵衛尉実基、同息男基清、小河小次郎資能、諸身兵衛能行、椎名次郎胤平等、我も／＼と諍蒐。平家方より越中次郎兵衛盛嗣、上総五郎兵衛忠光、同悪七兵衛景清、矢野右馬允家村、同七郎高村已下の輩、櫓より下合て防戦ければ、時を移し日を重けり。能登守教経は、打物取ても鬼神の如し、弓矢を取ても精兵の手聞也ければ、源氏の兵多此人にぞ討れける。判官下知しけるは、平家は大勢也、御方の勢はいまだ続ず、敵内裏に引籠て、出合出合戦はんには優々敷大事、其上兵船海上に数を不知、屋島の在家を焼払て、一方に付て責べしと云ければ、条里を立て造並たる在家、一千五百余家ありけるに、軍兵家々に火を放。折節西風烈く吹、猛火内裏に覆、一時が間に焼亡ぬ。余煙海上に浮て、雲の波煙波と紛けり。城内の軍兵は儲舟に諍乗。船の中の男女は、遥に是を見給けり。遂に安堵すまじき旅の宿、是も哀を催す。軍陣忽に陸の辺に乱て、兵船頻に波の上に騒。平家は兼て海上に舟を浮べ、舳屋形に垣楯掻たりければ、彼に乗移て、或一艘或二艘、漕寄漕寄散々に射。源氏の方より判官を先として、畠山庄司次郎重忠、熊谷次郎直実、平山武者所季重、土肥次郎実平、和田小太郎義盛、佐々木四郎高綱と名乗て、一人当千の兵也。東国にも誰かは肩を並ぶべきなれ共、我と思はん人々は、推並て組めや／＼と■懸て、追物射にいる。源平何れも勝負なし。源氏七騎兵は、馬足を休め身の息をも継んとて、渚に寄居たる船の陰に休居たり。平家も船を奥に漕除て、暫猶予する処に、勝浦にて軍しける輩、屋島浦の煙を見て、軍既に始れり、判官殿は無勢におはしつるぞ、急々とて追継追継に馳加る。此外武者七騎出来れり。判官何者ぞと問給へば、故八幡殿御乳母子に、雲上後藤内範明が三代の孫、藤次兵衛尉範忠也、年来は、平家世を取て天下を執行せしかば山林に隠居て、此二十余年明し暮し侍りき。今兵衛佐殿院宣を承給て、平家誅戮と披露之間、余嬉さに馳参ずと申。判官昔の好を思出て、最哀に思けり。即荒手の兵を指向て、入替入替戦けり。源平互に甲乙なし。両方引退き、又強健処に、沖より荘たる船一艘、渚に向て漕寄。二月廿日の事なるに、柳の五重に紅の袴著て、袖笠かづける女房あり。皆紅の扇に日出たるを枕に挟て、船の舳頭に立て、是を射よとて源氏の方をぞ招たる。此女房と云は、建礼門院の后立の御時、千人の中より撰出せる雑司に、玉虫前共云又は舞前共申。今年十九にぞ成ける。雲の鬢霞の眉、花のかほばせ雪の膚、絵に書とも筆も及がたし。折節夕日に耀て、いとゞ色こそ増りけれ。懸りければ、西国までも被召具たりけるを、被出て此扇を立たり。此扇と云は、故高倉院厳島へ御幸の時、三十本切立てて明神に進奉あり。皆紅に日出したる扇也。平家都を落給し時厳島へ参社あり、神主佐伯景広此扇を取出して、是は一人の御施入、明神の御秘蔵也、且は故院の御情、帝業の御守たるべし、されば此扇を持せ給たらば、敵の矢も還て其身にあたり候べし、と祝言して進せたりけるを、此を源氏射弛したらば当家軍に勝べし、射負せたらば源氏が得利なるべしとて、軍の占形にぞ被立たる。角して女房は入にけり。源氏は遥に是を見て、当座の景気の面白さに、目を驚し心を迷す者もあり、此扇誰射よと仰られんと肝膾を作り堅唾を飲る者もあり。判官畠山を召。重忠は木蘭地直垂に、■縄目の鎧著て、大中黒の矢負、所籐の弓の真中取、■の馬の太逞に金覆輪の鞍置、判官の弓手の脇に進出て畏つて候。義経は女にめづる者と平家に云なるが、角構へたらば、定て進み出て興に入ん処を、よき射手を用意して、真中さし当て射落さんと、たばかり事と心得たり、あの扇被射なんやと宣へば、畠山畏つて、君の仰、家の面目と存ずる上は子細を申に及ず、但是はゆゆしき晴態也、重忠打物取ては鬼神と云共更に辞退申まじ、地体脚気の者なる上に、此間馬にふられて、気分をさし手あはらに覚え侍り、射損じては私の恥はさる事にて、源氏一族の御瑕瑾と存ず、他人に仰よと申。畠山角辞しける間諸人色を失へり。判官は偖誰か在べきと尋ね給へば、畠山、当時御方には、下野国住人那太郎助宗が子に十郎兄弟こそ加様の小者は賢しく仕り候へ、彼等を召るべし、人は免し候はず共、強弓遠矢打者などの時は、可蒙仰と深申切たり。さらば十郎とて召れたり。褐の直垂に、洗革の鎧に片白の甲、二十四指たる白羽の矢に、笛籐の弓の塗籠たる真中取て、渚を下にさしくつろげてぞ参たる。判官あの扇仕れと仰す。御諚の上は子細を申に及ね共、一谷の巌石を落し時、馬弱して弓手の臂(ひぢ)を沙につかせて侍しが、灸治も未愈、小振して定の矢仕ぬ共不存、弟にて候与一冠者は、小兵にて侍れ共、懸鳥的などはづるゝは希也、定の矢仕ぬべしと存、可被仰下と弟に譲て引へたり。さらば与一とて召れたり。其日の装束は、紺村紺の直垂に緋威の鎧、鷹角反甲居頸に著なし、二十四指たる中黒の箭負、滋籐の弓に赤銅造の太刀を帯、宿赫白馬の太逞に、州崎に千鳥の飛散たる貝鞍置て乗たりけるが、進出て、判官の前に、弓取直して畏れり。あの扇仕れ、晴り所作ぞ不覚すなと宣ふ。与一仰承、子細申さんとする処に、伊勢三郎義盛、後藤兵衛尉実基等、与一を判官の前に引居て、面々の故障に日既に暮なんとす。兄の十郎指申上は子細や有べき、疾々急給へ／＼、海上暗く成なばゆゝしき御方の大事也、早々と云ければ、与一誠にと思ひ、甲をば脱童に持せ、揉烏帽子引立て、薄紅梅の鉢巻して、手綱掻繰、扇の方へぞ打向ける。生年十七歳、色白小鬚生、弓の取様馬の乗貌、優なる男にぞ見えたりける。波打際に打寄て、弓手の(有朋下Ｐ５８１)沖を見渡せば、主上を奉始、国母建礼門院、北政所、方々の女房達、御船其数漕並、屋形屋形の前後には、御簾も几帳もさゝめけり。袴温巻の坐までも、楊梅桃李とかざられたり。塩風にさそふ虚焼は、東袖にぞ通ふらし。妻手の沖を見渡せば、平家の軍将屋島大臣を始奉、子息右衛門督清宗、平中納言教盛、新中納言知盛、修理大夫経盛、新三位中将資盛、左中将清経、新少将有盛、能登守教経、侍従忠房、侍には、越中次郎兵衛盛嗣、悪七兵衛景清、江比田五郎、民部大輔等、皆甲冑を帯して、数百艘の兵船を漕並て是を見。水手梶取に至まで、今日を晴とぞ振舞たる。後の陸を顧れば、源氏の大将軍、大夫判官を始て、畠山庄司次郎重忠、土肥次郎実平、平山武者所季重、佐原介能澄、子息平六能村、同十郎能連、和田小太郎義盛、同三郎宗実、大田和四郎能範、佐々木四郎高綱、平左近太郎為重、伊勢三郎義盛、横山太郎時兼、城太郎家永等、源氏大勢にて轡を並て是を見る。定の当を知ざれば、源氏の兵各手をぞ握りける。されば沖も渚も推なべて、何所も晴と思けり。そこしも遠浅也、鞍爪鎧の菱縫の板の浸るまで打入たれ共、沛艾の馬なれば、海の中にてはやりけり。手綱をゆりすゑ／＼鎮れ共、寄る小波に物怖して、足もとゞめず狂けり。扇の方を急見れば、折節西風吹来て、船は艫舳も動つゝ、扇枕にもたまらねば、くるり／＼と廻けり。何所を射べし共覚ず。与一運の極と悲くて、眼をふさぎ心を静て、帰命頂礼八幡大菩薩、日本国中大小神祇、別しては下野国日光宇都宮、氏御神那須大明神、弓矢の冥加有べくは、扇を座席に定めて給へ、源氏の運も極、家の果報も尽べくは、矢を放ぬ前に、深く海中に沈め給へと祈念して、目を開て見たりければ、扇は座にぞ静れる。さすがに物の射にくきは、夏山の滋緑の木間より、僅に見ゆる小鳥を、不殺射こそ大事なれ、挟みて立たる扇也、神力既に指副たり、手の下なりと思つゝ、十二束二つ伏の鏑矢を抜出し、爪やりつゝ、滋籐の弓握太なるに打食、能引暫固たり。源氏の方より今少打入給へ／＼と云。七段計を阻たり。扇の紙には日を出したれば恐あり、蚊目の程をと志て兵と放。浦響くまでに鳴渡、蚊目より上一寸置て、ふつと射切たりければ、蚊目は船に留て、扇は空に上りつゝ、暫中にひらめきて、海へ颯とぞ入にける。折節夕日に耀て、波に漂ふ有様は、竜田山の秋の暮、河瀬の紅葉に似たりけり。鳴箭は抜て潮にあり、澪浮州と覚えたり。平家は舷を扣て、女房も男房も、あ射たり／＼と感じけり。源氏は鞍の前輪箙を扣て、あ射たり／＼と誉ければ、舟にも陸にも、どよみにてぞ在ける。紅の扇の水に漂ふ面白さに、玉虫は、時ならぬ花や紅葉をみつる哉芳野初瀬の麓ならねど平家侍に、伊賀平内左衛門尉が弟に、十郎兵衛尉家員と云者あり。余りの面白さにや、不感堪して、黒糸威の冑に甲をば著ず、引立烏帽子に長刀を以、扇の散たる所にて水車を廻し、一時舞てぞ立たりける。源氏是を見て種々の評定あり。是をば射べきか射まじきかと。射よと云人もあり。ないそと云者もあり。是程に感ずる者をば、如何無情可射、扇をだにも射る程の弓の上手なれば、増て人をば可弛とはよも思はじなれば、な射そと云人も多し。扇をば射たれ共武者をばえいず、されば狐矢にこそあれといはんも本意なければ、只射よと云者も多し。思々の心なれば、口々にとゞめきけるを、情は一旦の事ぞ、今一人も敵を取たらんは大切也とて、終に射べきにぞ定めにける。与一は扇射すまして、気色して陸へ上けるを、射べきに定めければ、又手綱引返て海に打入、今度は征矢を抜出し、九段計を隔つゝ、能引固て兵と放。十郎兵衛家員が頸の骨をいさせて、真逆に海中へぞ入にける。船の中には音もせず、射よと云ける者は、あ射たり／＼と云、ないそと云ける人は、情なしと云けれ共、一時が内に二度の高名ゆゝしかりければ、判官大に感じて、白■馬に、〈　尾花毛馬也　〉黒鞍置て与一に賜。弓矢取身の面目を、屋島の浦に極たり。近き代の人、扇をば海のみくづとなすの殿弓の上手は与一とぞきく平家不安思、楯突一人、弓取一人、打物一人、已上三人小舟に乗、陸に押付浜に飛下、楯突向て寄よ／＼と源氏を招。判官は、若者共蒐出て蹴散と下知し給へば、武蔵国住人丹生屋十郎、同四郎等喚て蒐。十五束の塗箆に、鷲の羽、鷹羽、鶴の本白、矯合たる箭を以て、先陣に進む十郎が馬の草別を、筈際射込たれば、馬は屏風をかへすが如く倒けり。十郎足を越て、妻手の方に落立処に、武者一人長刀を額に当て飛で懸る。十郎不叶と思て、貝吹て逃。逃も追も雷の如し。十郎希有にして逃延て、馬の陰に息突居たり。敵長刀をつかへて扇ひらき仕。今日此頃、童部までも沙汰すなる上総悪七兵衛景清、我と思はん人々は落合や、大将軍と名乗給ふ判官は如何に、三浦、佐々木はなきか、熊谷、平山は無歟、打物取ては鬼神にも不負と云なる畠山はなきか、組や／＼といへ共、名にや恐れけん打て出る者はなし。平家方に、備後国住人鞆六郎と云者あり。六十人が力持たりける力士なりければ、大臣殿、判官近付たらば組で海にも入、程隔たらば遠矢にも射殺せとて、船に被乗たり。松浦太郎艫取にて、屋島浦を漕廻し／＼、判官を伺けれ共便(有朋下Ｐ５８５)宜を得ず、責ては日の高名を極たる那須与一を成共射殺さばや、組ばやと伺廻けれ共叶ず。爰に伊勢三郎義盛が郎等に、大胡小橋太と云者有。駿河国田子浦にて生立、富士川に習、究竟の水練の上手にて、水底には半日も一日も潜ありきけるが、兵の乗ながら而も軍もせずして漕廻々々するは、大将軍伺やらん、直者にはあらじと危思て、人にも不知、焼内裏の芝築地の陰より、裸になりて犢鼻褌を掻、刀二持て海へ入、敵も御方も是を不知。鞆六郎がせがいに立て、己は軍もせず、人の船を下知して、軍はとこそすれ角こそすれと云ける処に、つと浮上て、足を懐いて曳声を出し、海へだぶと引入たり。陸にてこそ六十人が力と云けれ共、水には不心得ければ、深き所へ引て行、六郎が頸を取、髻を口にくはへて水の底を■、源氏の陣の前にぞ上たる。判官見給て尋聞給へば、上件の子細を申。下﨟なれ共思慮賢とて、鷲造の太刀を給り、世静て後、兵衛佐殿も、武芸の道神妙神妙とて、千余石の勧賞あり、誠にゆゝしかりける面目也。平家二百余人船十艘に乗、楯二十枚つかせて漕向へて、簇を汰へて散々に射る。源氏三百余騎、轡を並て波打際に歩せ出て是を射。矢の飛違事は降雨の如し。源平の叫音は百千の雷の響くに似。平氏は浪に浮みたり、源氏は陸に引へたり。天帝空より降、修羅海より出て、互に挿絵挿絵火焔剣戟を飛せつゝ、三世不休戦も、角やと覚えて無慙なり。平家射調れて、船共少々漕返す。判官勝に乗て、馬の太腹まで打入て戦けり。越中次郎兵衛盛嗣、折を得たりと悦て、大将軍に目を懸て熊手を下し、判官を懸ん／＼と打懸けり。判官■を傾て、懸られじ／＼と太刀を抜、熊手を打除打除する程に、脇に挟たる弓を海にぞ落しける。判官は弓を取て上らんとす。盛嗣は判官を懸て引んとす。如法危く見えければ、源氏の軍兵あれはいかに／＼、其弓捨給へ／＼と声々に申けれ共、太刀を以て熊手を会釈ひ、左の手に鞭を取て、掻寄てこそ取て上。 軍兵等が、縦金銀をのべたる弓也共、如何寿に替させ給ふべき、浅猿浅猿と申ければ、 判官は、軍将の弓とて、三人張五人張ならば面目なるべし、去共平家に被責付て弓を落したりとて、あち取こち取、強ぞ弱ぞと披露せん事口惜かるべし、又兵衛佐の漏きかんも云甲斐なければ、相構て取たりと宣へば、実の大将也と兵舌を振けり。小林神五宗行と云者あり、越中次郎兵衛盛嗣が、熊手を似て判官を懸て取んとしけるを、大将軍を懸させじとて、続いて游せたりける程に、事由なく上り給たりければ、盛嗣判官を懸弛て不安思ひ、游艇に乗移り、指寄て宗行が甲の吹返し、熊手をからと打懸て、曳音を出して引。宗行鞍の前輪に強く取付て鞭を打。主も究竟の乗尻也、馬も実にすくやか也。水に浮る小船なれば、汀へ向舳浪つかせて、ささめかいてぞ引上たる。宗行熊手に被懸ながら馬より飛下、貫帯たりけるが、沙に足を踏入つゝ、頸を延て曳々とぞ引たりける。盛嗣も大力、宗行も健者、勝劣何れも不見けり、金剛力士の頸引とぞ覚えたる。両方強く引程に、鉢付の板ふつと引切、鉢は残て頭にあり、■は熊手に留りぬ。盛嗣船を漕返せば、宗行陣に帰入。源平共に目を澄し、敵も御方も感嘆せり。判官宗行を召て、只今の振舞凡夫とは見えず、鬼神のわざと覚えたりとて、銀にて鍬形打たる竜頭の甲を賜はる。此甲と云は、源氏重代の重宝也。銀にて竜を前に三、後に三、左右に一宛打たれば、八竜と名付たり。保元軍に、鎮西八郎為朝の著たりける重代の宝なれ共、命に替んとの志を感じ、強力の挙動神妙也とて是を給ふ。宗行家門の面目と思ひて、畏てぞ立にける。

The passage corresponding roughly to the supposed instance of "mottainashi" in the Heike (not the Jōsuiki) is 軍兵等が、縦金銀をのべたる弓也共、如何寿に替させ給ふべき、浅猿浅猿と申ければ, which needless to say doesn't include mottainashi; the word used is asamashi.

So now that even the corresponding passage in the Jōsuiki has been located, and no extant version of the 弓流 narrative apparently uses this word apart from Wikipedia and sources that copy Wikipedia (including, apparently, Taylor), can we please stop talking about this???

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 02:32, 20 November 2019 (UTC)

It should be noted that now, well over a month after it was conclusively proven above that Taylor was wrong to cite the yumi-nagashi narrative as the place in the Jōsuiki where mottainashi appears, Francis Schonken is still aggressively pushing for both the citation of Taylor and the obviously-CIRCULAR content attributed to him to be restored to the article with the nonsense argument that my commentary in this section constitutes "OR". For the record, while the comment that analysing sources and deciding what not to include in the article can never be OR in the Wikipedia sense, I should reemphasize that I don't even need to go back and look at the primary sources, or the more-reliable secondary sources like Hasegawa that explicitly contradict Taylor, to say we can't cite him: Taylor's essay contradicts itself on the relevant issue, which by itself is enough to throw it out as a source for that content. Moreover, if the content was accurate, then we should be able to find some source that pre-dates the May 2008 edit that added it to this Wikipedia article. Given that all the pre-2008 sources seem to say the narrative in question is not the yumi-nagashi narrative, we should be assuming that if sources appeared after 2008 and happened to say the same thing as Wikipedia this is not a coincidence. Anyway, now that it finally occurred to me to use WikiBlame to track the original edit that added the text, I know who added it, and surprisingly they have edited Wikipedia several times this year, including as recently as last month, so I might as well message them to see if they remember where they got the information. Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 15:42, 29 December 2019 (UTC)

Update

So, I emailed Taylor; I did not get his permission to reprint his response in full, but he said that while his memory was foggy he recalled being "reluctant to include [the content in question]" because it needed better sourcing.

Given this (a), and (b) the fact that his published piece explicitly cited a source that didn't agree with his claim (I would assume he cited it more as a "cf" or a "see also" rather than as supporting his factual claim), as well as (c) the fact that Hasegawa explicitly says the Jōsuiki was about the night before the Battle of Ichinotani rather than the Battle of Yashima that took place a year later, on top of (d) the fact that the original author of the text in question has not been forthcoming with a reliable source, I think we can safely assume that Taylor got his information from Wikipedia after it had originally been added here in 2008 as unambiguous WP:OR.

Hijiri 88 (聖やや) 03:33, 25 February 2020 (UTC)