5-storey budag

There is lots of five-storey pagoda in Japan, like the pic.

To find the origins of Japan pagodas, we must go back to ancient India, where Buddhism was born around the 5th century BC.


the small, parasol-like structures on the top of the surpass represent the past, present and future　of the Buddha. this arrangement changed over the centuries into the finials found on top of Japanese pagodas.

Respite their great height, no five-storey pagodas are known to have collapsed in earthquakes. why are they so earthquake-resistant? some reasons have been suggested by modern science. this test was conducted on a model of a five-storey pagoda built on a ome-fifths scale. It revealed that the storeys do not all move in the same direction at once.

some sway to the left, while others sway to the right. if all the storeys were to lean in the same direction, the centre of gravity storey moves independently, the centre of gravity does not shift so easily. this minimizes the risk of the pagoda　collapsing. Many of the new high rise building in Japanese cities in corporate earthquake-suppression technology, based on the principles used in traditional pagodas.

this architectural know-how dating back over 1000 years lives on in these modern structures.