Shake, rattle and roll

YOUR correspondent is indebted to readers for their interesting comments about last week's column on timber-framed buildings. He is especially grateful to Anjin-san, whose observations about Japanese pagodas reminded him of a day spent a dozen years ago with Shuzo Ishida, a structural engineer at Kyoto Institute of Technology. Mr Ishida, known to his students as “Professor Pagoda”, has a passion for the building's unique dynamics.

What has mystified scholars over the ages is how these tall, wooden buildings cope so well with the earthquakes and typhoons that plague Japan. Many have been struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Others have been torched by marauding warlords. Fire was a perennial hazard in Japan when wood and paper buildings were the norm. But, remarkably, only two of the country's hundreds of wooden pagodas have collapsed over the past 1,400 years as a result of violent shaking.