Nobel Prize-winning environmentalist Wangari Maathai has become somehow popular in Japan, for she adopted a Japanese expression “mottai-nai” to advertise and promote her work.
As she is an African lady, this EEreport might be for Africa-loving people.
Not English or French, but Japanese, especially with the expression “mottai-nai” she chose is an interesting fact. On the other hand, Japanese are unlikely to use any African language and its symbol to express a slogan for any cultural activity, so far, which is one sad thing for Japan. So, I am afraid that she must realize it and interpret it in some way when she visited Japan with full of English commercial signs.
The word “mottai-nai” is used with a sense of self-humility or recommendation of humility to one’s subordinates or juniors for an educational or disciplinary purpose. It is used to stress a view that you or I should not behave like a rich and arrogant human being who thinks he or she has so many abundant resources and so much money that she or he may be allowed to waste anything as he or she wishes.
However, the most important meaning is that you have to be thankful to the nature or a divine spirit that give you any little, valuable thing. Be humble to the great nature and divine spirits to which you are apparently inferior.
Literally or originally, “mottai-nai” is divided into “mottai” meaning sincerity, respect, or solemnity, and “nai” meaning non-existence of anything or anybody. It could be used when expressing adoration to a God or the God, in the manner that while I lack enough respect, what a blessing has been given to me by the holly one. It is just like what a friendship was given to a wretch, that is me, by Jesus.
The saddest thing about Africa is it has no tradition of a kind of science that has worked as a base of modern industry. Why Europe and not Africa developed basements of the modern industrial society might be still misunderstood. It is not because Africa lacked something but it had had enough. But, many Europeans thought they lacked ability; consequently Europeans didn’t respect Africans.
However if you live with presupposition that only Europeans have ability and are clever, so that they have a right to claim more, it simply proves that you have not and you are not.
It was not in a forest in ancient Europe that urban civilization began. It began in agricultural field in a region now called Iraq. Britain, France, and Germany were even not meaningful part of the Roman Empire. Their assumption was very biased to the degree that might be judged to be rather wrong.
Even a Chinese revolutionary leader said, in order to raise the morale of his comrades, that the four great inventions of the human history, that is, gun powder, paper, the compass, and printing, had been all invented by early or ancient Chinese.
But, there is also a sad thing about China. It has not developed a philosophy symbolized by the Japanese expression “mottai-nai.”
Descendants of old Europeans adventured into America and their descendants became main-stream Americans. They did so without a philosophy of “mottai-nai.”
From a Japan’s point of view, it is neither Europeans nor American mainstreams that have discovered the mentality represented by “mottai-nai.” But it is an African Lady Japanese would reasonably respect for this matter only.
Compared with her wisdom to choose a Japanese expression instead of any European one, the honor she received in a Nobel Prize awards ceremony is a secondary matter.
In 2001, a critical year in various ways, the U.S. accounted for roughly 26.1% of oil consumption of all the world, Asia except Japan and China accounted for 13.9%, Japan 7.2%, China 6.7%, The Middle East 5.7%, Germany 3.7%, Russia 3.3%, France 2.7%, Italy2.6%, the U.K. 2.2%, and the rest of the world 25.6% in certain statistics.
So, to whom did she direct her message with the choice of symbolic expression?
“ALL THINGS ARE DONE ACCORDING TO GOD’S PLAN AND DECISION.”