Wushe Branch Office of the Nōkō District Police

The Noko District Office (能高郡役所, Nōkō Gun Yakusho) was the administrative headquarters of the Noko District (能高郡), one of the administrative divisions of Taichū Prefecture (台中州) during the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan (1895–1945). The district office itself stood in Puli Town (埔里街); in the mountain settlement of Wushe (霧社, Musha in Japanese) in present-day Ren'ai Township, Nantou County, the district police maintained a branch office (霧社分室), through which the district oversaw governance of the indigenous Seediq, Atayal, and Bunun peoples inhabiting the mountainous interior of central Taiwan.

The Noko District Office served as the primary instrument of Japanese colonial authority over the indigenous mountain populations. District officials and the police stationed at the Wushe branch office and its outlying police posts enforced Japanese policies including forced labor (出役), cultural assimilation programs, weapons confiscation, and restrictions on traditional customs such as headhunting and facial tattooing. The heavy-handed administration, particularly by local police officers who exploited indigenous laborers and interfered in tribal affairs, generated deep resentment among the Seediq communities.

On October 27, 1930, this simmering tension erupted in the Wushe Incident (霧社事件), the largest and most significant armed indigenous uprising against Japanese colonial rule in Taiwan. Led by Seediq chief Mona Rudao (莫那·魯道) of the Tgdaya group, over 300 warriors from six Seediq villages attacked the Wushe Public School during its annual sports day ceremony, killing 134 Japanese nationals including women and children; the Noko district head (郡守), Ogasawara Keitarō, who was attending the event, was among the dead. The warriors also struck at police stations and government facilities throughout the district.

Following the initial attack, Puli — the seat of the Noko District Office — became the staging area for the Japanese response, and Wushe, retaken on 29 October, its forward command post. The colonial government mobilized roughly 1,200 soldiers and 1,300 police, supplemented by pro-Japanese indigenous auxiliaries, to suppress the uprising. The Japanese counterattack employed modern military technology including aircraft for bombing and reconnaissance, artillery, machine guns, and — most controversially — gas munitions; whether these were blister agents or only tear gas is still disputed among historians. The command post at Wushe coordinated these operations across the rugged mountain terrain.

The uprising was suppressed by late December 1930, at a devastating cost: of the approximately 1,200 Seediq involved, 644 perished — 290 by suicide rather than surrender. Mona Rudao himself died by suicide in the mountains during the suppression. The aftermath brought further tragedy: on April 25, 1931, in what became known as the Second Wushe Incident, pro-Japanese indigenous groups attacked the surviving Seediq, killing over 200. The remaining survivors were forcibly relocated from their ancestral lands. The Wushe branch office building did not survive the postwar era; its site lies within the modern settlement of Wushe, near the Wushe Incident Memorial Park that commemorates the uprising and its victims.