The great attraction in Hokkaidō to those who travel for pleasure and education combined, letting alone the peculiarly weird and wild scenery and the pleasures afforded to the sportsman, is in the Ainu race, or Aborigines of Japan, who, it appears, are gradually becoming extinct. Though this peculiar race of people was once very numerous and formerly inhabited the whole of Japan proper, they now number, as has been previously remarked, no more than 16,765 persons, and these are decreasing. Visitors to Japan should surely see something of them if possible. In a very few years they will, in all probability, become quite extinct, or at all events become so amalgamated with the immigrants as to become indistinguishable from the Japanese. Hokkaidō is the only place in the world where they can be seen untainted by European influence, for those who live in Russian Territory have now become quite Russianized. Here in Hokkaiddō may be seen the oldest and newest peoples of this Ancient Empire side by side, two distinct and very different races, the one superseding the other; — intelligence, fore-thought, and energetic enterprise triumphing over ignorance, improvidence, and inaction. Here one may actually see that process of the gradual extinction of the Ainus and the appropriation of their land which has been going on for years; not indeed by cruelty and slaughter or owing to unfeeling wantonness, but simply because the Ainus have not the self-reliance and steady energy by which they could, if they chose, work and live happily side by side with the Japanese. But the race, simple, kind, truthful and child-like as we have found it, seems destined to pass away in a few years. Something it is hoped will be done for these poor people in the future. The Japanese are now waking up to their duty towards, and responsibility with regard to the Ainus and a society has been established which has for its object the "rescue" of the race. It remains to be seen what will be done by this Society. Those people who desire to see the Ainus in their own homes can do so by going to Usu in Volcano Bay from Hakodate, or by visiting Chitose from Satporo. But a far better idea of them may be had by allowing one's self a little more time and going to Piratoru in the Province of Hidaka. // This is the old Ainu capital and is a most typical village; it is surrounded by the most lovely scenery. (pg. 14, 15)From Itinerary of Hokkaido, Japan by the Rev. John Batchelor, presented by the Hakodate Chamber of Commerce to Visitors of the Columbian Exhibition Held at Chicago, U.S.A. in 1893 (Tokyo Tsujiki Type Foundry, Tokyo: 1893)
Besides playing the old game of victim-blaming, and not to mention the spurious logic behind this, we see strong overtones of progressivist discourses by which races around the world are segmented and isolated from each other in a universal competition toward an ill-defined "end of history" as Francis Fukuyama put it. According to this logic, which is very much in accordance with Batchelor's ethnic Japanese contemporaries who were involved in Ainu policy, and for that matter, colonial officials around the world, a race, depending on its inborn qualities, will either thrive by actively progressing towards this future or be doomed to die out if they fall behind. Aside from the obvious fact that "races" are not mutually exclusive, hermetically sealed entities that act collectively, the social Darwinist logic behind this racist view of the survival of the fittest negates any question of morals. A race, or individual, cannot be victimized: they can only let themselves by victimized. And by this same logic, one cannot be a victimizer. Rather, the assumption is that, as Hobbes argued, homo homini lupus. Man is a wolf to man. This renders violent, exploitative, hateful behaviour as natural and normal. This is a sociopathic logic, and given how deeply anti-social social Darwinism is, the most curious part of Batchelor's passage his muted appeal to "Society" to swoop in and "rescue" the Ainu from themselves. We see this seeming contradiction in the discourse surrounding the Former Natives Protection Act that Batchelor is vaguely referencing here. The assumption is it is a sign of modernity and high ethical development to be able to have the gumption to "rescue" a dying race.
One other important consideration here is that, as mentioned above, this pamphlet was published in the same year in English and Japanese. I knew that Batchelor wrote this sort of drivel about the Ainu already, but I had wondered, as he does have such a reputation for his work with the Ainu, if this wasn't a sort of race baiting to sell books in Great Britain or the United States where there was a veritable print industry focused on racist descriptions of colonized people. But, as the publication of this book for a Japanese market shows, this may not simply have been simply for foreign consumption.
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