Quote Japan
Interesting, odd, outrageous or informative quotes about JapanDisaster- Quotes about Japanese earthquakes, tsunami etc.
“Building codes in some Western countries do not recognise this kind of [traditional Japanese house] top-heavy structure. Getting a building permit for a traditional Japanese house in the United States in not easy. Many of the post-and-beam homes destroyed in Kobe were the result of heavy roofs collapsing” Another nail in the coffin of the “we don’t build in brick because wood is better in an earthquake” argument, from Insight Guides Japan
“Among the rumors that went flying around the city was the imaginative one that an unnamed country of the West had developed an eathquake machine and was experimenting upon Japan. There were,nevertheless, no outbreaks of violence against.. westerners. Instead..,the nation turned on Koreans. The government urged restraint .. because the Western world might disapprove.” Edward Seidensticker in “Low City High City“
“The city was proud of its fires, which were called Edo no Hana – and occured so frequently and burned so freely that no house in the low city could expect to last more than 2 decades”
This could perhaps explain how a culture that now means few houses survive more than two decades for other reasons developed. Edward Seidensticker in “Low City High City”
“In the years after the Second World War, one was frequently surprised to hear from the presumably fortunate resident of an unbombed pocket that he would have been happier if it too had been bombed” Edward Seidensticker in “Low City High City”
Another example of the Japanese love of the new, and their acceptance of “natural” disasters?
