Source analysis: John Batchelor: The Ainu of Japan

Reflecting early Kaitakushi claims of Meiji Japanese Ainu policy as a corrective to the excesses and misdirection of the Tokugawa-backed Matsumae domain, Batchelor for his part divides the blame between pre-Meiji Japanese policies towards the Ainu, careful not to bring his critique into the present. Looking millennia into the past, Batchelor points to "wars of extermination" waged against the Ainu by the mythological Emperor Jinmu in the 7th century BC and the 8th century Shogun "Saka no ue no Tamura Naru" (likely referring to Saka-no-Ue-no-Tamuramaro) as partially responsible for the decline in the Ainu population in the year 1892, when The Ainu of Japan was first published. (pg. 284) Jumping forward centuries, Batchelor returns to the question of alcohol consumption, pointing to Matsumae officials as having "encouraged" alcohol amongst the Ainu, saying this has "undermined the Ainu constitutions, sapped their strength, and taken nearly all that is manly from their souls". (pg. 285) With their masculine vitality drained, the Ainu are now merely facing the natural consequences. However, even while pointing to settler colonial Hokkaido to argue that the Japanese government "does not recognise any land as belonging to the Ainu", Batchelor maintains a pretense of ignorance of the material effects of Japanese settler colonization on the Ainu. (pg. 287) He can only, blaming Ainu clothing and shelter, point to Ainu dying "due to exposure", and discrediting Ainu medicine to say that the sick are merely left to die. (pg. 285) And quite literally self-destructive, Batchelor blames "[p]etty wars and quarrels" amongst the Ainu as causing a decline in the Ainu population, (pg. 286) with men "murdered during sleep" and women and children "carried off as slaves to work in the gardens". (pg. 288) This is particularly true, according to Batchelor, amongst "[t]he Ainu of the Tokapchi [Jpn: Tokachi] district" as "particularly addicted to this kind of warfare" (pg. 288). Warfare and spirits, then, become the two self-destructive additive substances.  Far worse, however, these same warlike Ainu are, according to Batchelor, are known as "eaters of their own kind". For Batchelor, the final nail in the coffin is Ainu women being willingly taken as "wife or concubines of the more civilised Japanese" (pg. 289), leaving those few left in Ainu villages to engage in incestuous relationships with close cousins: marriages "not likely to increase the longevity or physical and mental strength of a people, or the diuturnity of a race or nation" (pg. 290). The Ainu, then are, for Batchelor, to blame for their own fate, rather than the actions of their colonizers.