A Japanese knitwear brand launched in 2013 as the in-house label of Okuyama Meriyasu, a knitting mill that's operated in Sagae, Yamagata Prefecture, the historic center of Japan's knitwear industry, since 1951. Kohei Okuyama, the mill's third-generation CEO, built Batoner specifically to carry the company's techniques forward; the name itself plays on "baton," as in passing craft down to the next generation. Manufacturing still relies on handwork methods largely unchanged since the mill opened over 70 years ago.