John Batchelor

Who was John Batchelor?

Rev. John Batchelor was an Anglican English missionary to the Ainu people of Japan. First sent under the auspices of the Church Mission Society of the Church of England, Batchelor lived from 1877 to 1941 among the indigenous Ainu communities in the Northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. He was a charismatic and iconoclastic missionary for the Anglican Church in Japan and published highly regarded work on the language and culture of the Ainu people. Batchelor only reluctantly left Japan at the outbreak of the Second World War in 1941.

Batchelor harshly criticized the Japanese for their cruel treatment of the Ainu, saying "I'm past eighty, and probably that accounts for it. But I've been told I'm the only foreigner in Japan who can tell the Japanese exactly what I think of them and get away with it."

The Japanese forced the Ainu from their land and forbade them to practice their traditions and culture, Ainu were not allowed to hunt for food, speak Japanese, or obtain an education, being forcefully segregated in small villages. After Japan realized they could exploit the Ainu they reversed their policy, Batchelor said "The Japanese treat them better now, simply because they came to realize that the Ainu were a valuable curiousity worth preserving. There was no kindness or sentiment in it—none whatever. They quit trying to exterminate this shattered relic of a dying Caucasian race when visitors with money to spend began coming from all over the world just to see and study them. If today the Ainu are protected wards of the Government, and if the Government has paid me any honor, it is not because of a change of heart on the part of the Japanese; it is only because the Ainu became worth something to Japan." During the era of Samurai in Japan, Ainus had to grovel and smear their face on soil when they met a Japanese soldier, or face immediate decapitation. Japan also forbade the ownership of weapons among the Ainu.