Bedroom Chair

The chair in this photograph was not removed when the building emptied. It was simply left. When fire moved through Seika Dormitory in July 2007, displacing around 40 residents from a building some had occupied for decades, the lower floors remained largely intact. Furniture, books, vinyl records, clothing, kitchen equipment and at least one piano stayed where they were. This bedroom chair, its fabric worn and dusty, its frame still holding its shape under window light, is one of those objects. 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 structure, three storeys of reinforced concrete above a basement level, sat on 3,100 square metres of national land in Kohinata, Bunkyo-ku, central Tokyo. Its purpose was to house Taiwanese students pursuing education in Japan during the colonial period. The original name was 高砂寮 (Takasago-ryō); it was renamed Seika-ryō in 1946, after Japan's surrender ended colonial administration over Taiwan. What followed was a decades-long ownership dispute. When Japan normalised relations with the People's Republic of China in 1972, severing diplomatic ties with the Republic of China in Taiwan, the dormitory's ownership fell into ambiguity between three governments. The Japanese government declined to intervene. Residents continued to live there under month-to-month arrangements, paying around ¥8,000 per month, for another 35 years. The July 2007 fire resolved what diplomacy had not. Approximately 70 per cent of the building was destroyed. Two residents died. The Kanto Finance Bureau sealed the building. The dormitory was photographed across two visits in 2012, four and a half years after the fire and a year before demolition in 2013. The site now operates as グランヴィ小日向 (Grand Vie Kohinata), a residential aged care facility that opened in October 2019. This chair, caught in window light, records what the building held before it was cleared.