George Montandon (1879–1944)

George Montandon was a Swiss-French physician and anthropologist who carried out field research in Japan and wrote about Ainu origins. Within the racial classifications of his time, he interpreted the Ainu as a surviving Caucasian—or “white”—remnant. The claim is included here because it shaped a strand of early Ainu anthropology, not because modern genetics or anthropology accepts the typology on which it was based.

Montandon’s later career was inseparable from racist and antisemitic activity in occupied France. Any use of his ethnographic writings therefore requires explicit historical criticism: his observations may be studied as documents in the history of anthropology, while his racial system and political commitments must not be treated as neutral science.