Japanese Pagoda

Prerequisite: none

This is a Japanese pagoda from 700AD:

Japan has intense seismic zones. A couple of its earthquakes made headline news in the past. How come we never hear about fallen pagodas? Ever?

Because they don't. Pagodas don't fall. These buildings remain while modern innovations continue to crumble.

Construction secrets revealed here:
http://web-japan.org/nipponia/nipponia33/en/topic/

To summarize the article:
1) Wood is flexible.
2) Tenon-mortise joints increase flexibility.
3) All levels are independent of other levels,
4) so that each level sways in counter balance
5) on a central pillar.

So there you have it. The pagodas were designed to absorb and shake out the shock. A Chinese idiom describes this very well: 以柔克剛. The literal translation is "to conquer hardness with softness". "To conquer force with yielding" sounds much better with our context.

 Profound eh.