Ōhashi-gumi Supervisor’s Dormitory (豐里移民村大橋組指導官舍)

The frontal view of the old dormitory sometime after it collapsed. This traditional wooden residence once housed the supervisor or shidō-kan (指導官) of Ōhashi-gumi (大橋組), the largest of four settlements that made up Toyosato Immigrant Village (豐里移民村), one of many such Japanese settler-colonial projects on reclaimed river land in Changhua County in the 1930s. This particular village was established in April 1936 on land reclaimed by the diversion of Dongluo River (東螺溪), also known as Old Zhuoshui River (舊濁水溪). Settlers were drawn primarily from Kagoshima, Kumamoto, and Kagawa prefectures and cultivated rice, sweet potato, sugarcane, and tobacco. By the end of 1942 the village counted 119 households and 642 residents. The right side of the collapsed dormitory. In the post-war era Japanese settlers were expelled from Taiwan and these old homes were typically assigned by lot to Taiwanese families or newly arrived Chinese immigrants. Although the later history of this residence is unknown it…