Kitchen

The kitchen at Seika Dormitory, photographed in 2012, holds a particular kind of stillness. Rusting pots and pans remain on the stove. Light falls through broken windows onto surfaces thick with dust. Nothing was cleared out. Nobody came back to pack up. Seika Dormitory, known in Japanese as 清華寮 (Seika-ryō), was built in 1927 by the Gakuso Foundation, a body affiliated with the Taiwan Governor-General's Office, on 3,100 square metres of national land in Kohinata, Bunkyo-ku, central Tokyo. Its original purpose was housing for Taiwanese students studying in the capital during Japan's colonial administration of Taiwan. The building was reinforced concrete, three storeys above ground with one basement level, and sat adjacent to Takushoku University, which had been founded in 1900 as the Taiwan Association School to train personnel for colonial administration. When Japan's colonial rule over Taiwan ended in 1945, the Gakuso Foundation ceased to function and the dormitory became an orphaned property. Renamed from 高砂寮 (Takasago-ryō) to 清華寮 (Seika-ryō) in 1946, it kept operating, housing successive generations of Taiwanese, Chinese and Japanese residents on monthly rents of approximately ¥8,000. Ownership questions that Japan's 1972 diplomatic normalisation with the People's Republic of China made newly complicated were never resolved. The government declined to act. The residents stayed. In July 2007, fire broke out. Two residents died. Seven were hospitalised. Approximately 70 per cent of the building was destroyed. Around 40 people were displaced. The Kanto Finance Bureau sealed the building. The kitchen in this photograph is one of the spaces that survived more intact. The fire moved upward through the structure; lower levels retained more of what had been left behind. Kitchenware, books, clothing, vinyl records and furniture remained distributed across the building, each room preserving a specific domestic arrangement rather than a gradual clearing out. The building was demolished in 2013. The site reopened in October 2019 as Grand Vie Kohinata, a residential care facility for the elderly.