Another Kitchen

The kitchen at Seika Dormitory is a small room. A single pot sits on a rusted stove. Daylight comes through a window above it, filtered through glass that has not been cleaned in years. Nothing has been moved. The room holds what was left behind when the building was sealed after the July 2007 fire, and it held that arrangement until Brett Patman photographed it in 2012, and then for another year until the demolition in 2013. Seika Dormitory, known formally as 清華寮 (Seika-ryō), was built in 1927 by the 学租財団 (Gakuso Foundation), a body affiliated with the Taiwan Governor-General's Office. The site was 3,100 square metres of state-owned land in Kohinata, Bunkyo-ku, central Tokyo, adjacent to the Bunkyo campus of Takushoku University. The building was reinforced concrete, three storeys above ground with one basement level. Its original name was 高砂寮 (Takasago-ryō); it was renamed Seika-ryō in 1946, the year after Japan's colonial administration of Taiwan came to an end. The dormitory kept functioning after the colonial framework that built it dissolved. When Japan severed diplomatic ties with the Republic of China in 1972, the question of who owned the building became tangled between three governments, none of whom wished to resolve it. Residents continued paying approximately ¥8,000 per month in rent. Around 40 people in 30 households were still living there when fire broke out in July 2007. Two residents died. Seven were hospitalised. The Kanto Finance Bureau sealed the building. What the fire left behind on the lower floors was largely intact. Kitchenware, books, furniture, clothing, vinyl records. The personal arrangements of lives interrupted rather than gradually vacated. The kitchen in this photograph is one such arrangement: a pot, a stove, a window, and the settled quiet of a room that has been waiting for someone to return. The building was demolished in May 2013. The site reopened on 1 October 2019 as グランヴィ小日向 (Grand Vie Kohinata), a residential aged care facility with 122 rooms.