Originally Posted by jcwang

The traditional Japanese house is known for its attitude toward aesthetics, balance, harmony, economy and beauty. Becuase the natural disaster from Typhoon, Started in the early 50's, Japanese government set up a very restric building code for all Japanese new houses especailly those along the coastal area. The japanese people complied with the government's building code, they gave up their beloved raditional wood framed houses and start building a stronger, safer houses to avoid Typhoon disasters.

If you are interested, you can google Typhoon damages along Japan region for the past 60 years and you can easily find out that there are much less and less destructions casued by Typhoon damamge in coastal Japan. Simply because the japanese accept the battle with natural, Only the strong survive.

Even though RC concrete structure sounds like very uncomfortable to live in, however Japanese turn more into it's interior design rather than exterior. We are live in a modern world, 5 millions ago our ancestor taught us how to bhuild a safer house to avoid disaster, somehow what forgot the basic foundation of building a house and that is to make is SAFE.