John Batchelor

Archdeacon John D. Batchelor (March 20, 1855 - April 2, 1944) was an Anglican English missionary among the Ainu people of Japan until 1941. For the first time, with the assistance of the Society of Church Missions under the Church of England, Batchelor lived from 1877 to 1941 among Ainu indigenous communities on the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. He was a charismatic and iconoclastic missionary for the Anglican Church in Japan and published a highly regarded work on the language and culture of the Ainu people. Batchelor reluctantly left Japan at the start of World War II in 1941. John Batchelor was born in Uckfield, East Sussex, in the family of the son of William Batchelor, a local tailor and parish clerk. Batchelor attended Uckfield High School and with the support of Rev. E.T. Cardale was accepted as a candidate for study at the College of the Church Missionary Society in Islington. On September 22, 1875, Batchelor traveled with a group of missionaries from the Church Missionary Society to Hong Kong. Arriving in Hong Kong on November 11, 1875, he immediately began to study the Chinese language.