In honor of Earth Day 2025, Curator Emerita Diane Durston will be presenting a lecture that revisits a Japanese concept centered on the message of environmental awareness.

Mottainai means “nothing wasted,” an often repeated saying in Japanese with which mothers urge their children not to waste anything, not even the smallest grain of rice. As part of a yearlong series of programs on the theme of “Living in Harmony with Nature” in 2011, Portland Japanese Garden hosted a groundbreaking exhibition of bast fiber and recycled folk textiles in an exhibition entitled MOTTAINAI: The Fabric of Life. The exhibition showcased some of the remarkable ways in which the Japanese used foraged and recycled materials to cloth themselves in less affluent times, “not wasting anything” as the adage mottainai advised.

About Diane Durston

Diane Durston is a writer, lecturer, cultural consultant, and educator, who lived for 18 years in Japan. From 2007 to 2018, Durston was the Arlene Schnitzer Curator of Culture, Art & Education at Portland Japanese Garden, where she has been instrumental in expanding the Garden’s reputation as a center of cultural learning, laying the groundwork for the Garden’s new International Institute for Garden Arts and Culture. Upon her retirement in 2018, Durston assumed the role of Curator Emerita. To learn more about Durston, read the rest of her bio here.