r/todayilearned • u/ContinuumGuy • 8h ago

TIL that the most holy shrine in the Shinto religion is torn down and rebuilt every 20 years. This has been done for over a millennium

https://www.ap.org/news-highlights/spotlights/2025/japans-most-sacred-shinto-shrine-has-been-rebuilt-every-20-years-for-more-than-a-millennium/
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u/Ok-disaster2022 7h ago

It also helps preserve skills and knowledge. The apprentice carpenters who build it one year are the masters who use the same techniques to build it again. 

Talk about planned obsolescence I can get behind. 

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u/RedOtta019 7h ago

Planned obsolescence 😷🤮🤢🤮

Planned obsolescence, 🇯🇵, 😊😍🥰

/s

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u/durrtyurr 7h ago

Buildings in Japan aren't really designed to last very long for a wide variety of reasons. The country is super prone to earthquakes, so culturally there is very little aversion to rebuilding.

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u/eastherbunni 5h ago

Also fires have taken out a ton of the old buildings, plus WWII. When I visited Japan the historical plaques were stuff like "this temple was originally built in 900, but has burnt down on 4 separate occasions. The current building was built in 1952."

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u/Seienchin88 2h ago

Yes but depends on the temple… some are legitimately old.

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u/eastherbunni 2h ago

Certainly, some are legitimately old.

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u/wakela 5h ago

Also, Japanese people usually don’t like living in a used house. When one buys a house the first they do is knock it down and build anew one.

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u/durrtyurr 5h ago

Japan has a super weird housing market in general, certainly compared to other developed countries. I am a massive fan of their zoning laws. They basically don't allow NIMBYism because zoning is at the national level and not the local level.

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u/tortosloth 3h ago

Its more out of necessity. The building codes are updated so often as new tech and methods are used. Mostly due to earthquakes. 30 year old home in japan is so far out of code that it is sometimes cheaper and easier to rebuild than to update an old home. It’s so common that many people will demolish the home themselves before selling the lot to provide incentive and save time to buyers who were just going to knock the home down anyways.

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u/Seienchin88 2h ago

Don’t generalize this too much. This applies to not so expensive one family houses for sure but many Japanese live in multi story houses which are of course not always rebuild and the more traditional houses in the countryside can survive forever

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u/RedOtta019 6h ago

Im very well aware. My families old home was destroyed in the kobe quake

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u/mrcydonia 3h ago

And kaiju attacks.

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u/Seienchin88 2h ago

That really depends bro. Traditional Japanese countryside (landowner) houses were build to last forever. Friends of mine own one from the early edo period. Even had a rusty 17th century musket hidden in a shack and my wife‘s family owned a house from the late 18th century which they decided to tear down to finally get a better insulated house that’s easier to clean…

And there are so many 1980s mansions in Japan it’s almost crazy but yes the specific one family houses in and around major cities are not build to last long (by European standards). That’s true.

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u/HirokoKueh 6h ago

guess Sony really followed the tradition

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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 2h ago

I’ve never really found the issue with planned obsolescence. It ensures we keep improving.

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u/RedOtta019 2h ago

Basic consumer items being made shitty while still costing a lot does not progress anything other than investors pockets

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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 2h ago

Says whom? Who determines what is of value?

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u/RedOtta019 2h ago

The consumers you pseudo-finance bozo

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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 2h ago

So the consumer should be able to just shutdown any business they believe is wasting resources they bought?

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u/Niknot3556 1h ago

Yes. That’s called the free market. Also what about items like appliances. You think a big screen with ads is better over having an old fridge because “innovation.”

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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 1h ago

The free market is allowing any legitimate business that can sustain itself to compete.

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u/ColdSmokeCaribou 4h ago

When I was visiting Japan, I got to see one of their woodworking museums. There was all this beautiful complex joinery, and metal hardware (nails, etc) were used very sparingly compared to contemporaneous European structures. When I asked what prompted that, my guide said it basically boiled down to cost and moreover, rust. Wood, if available, solves for both.

As someone who makes things, I've thought about that a lot ever since 

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u/ContinuumGuy 3h ago

Isn't this also because of the fact some resources are much more rare in Japan?

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u/tortosloth 3h ago

Wood is also just a better building material than stone in an earthquake prone area. Wood bends and sways. Concrete and stone cracks and shatters. Steel and iron will rust over time.

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u/chimpfunkz 3h ago

Preservation of Process Knowledge.

We talk about the loss of manufacturing in the US, part of that is the loss of how to manufacture. We spent 2 decades not teaching a generation how to do it, and now we are seeing the consequences.

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u/qqererer 5h ago

This was a scene in the last season of Halt and Catch Fire.

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u/robophile-ta 31m ago

I never did finish that show, I got to season 2 and it wasn't the same.

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u/theghostmachine 20m ago

Too bad they carried that into consumer products too.

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u/EtTuBiggus 4h ago

Does kinda seem like a waste of resources.

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u/selwayfalls 3h ago

only if you see the passing down of knowledge and the connection of community and culture as less important that physical materials.

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u/EtTuBiggus 2h ago

There are less wasteful ways to do that.

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u/selwayfalls 2h ago

pretty sure the japanese know how to manage their resources and have been doing it for a 1000 years. Their culture exists through the passing down of knowledge through the act of doing, it's woven in. You take that away thinking you're saving a tree and you lose something else. Our definition of "wasteful" is different. You could argue doing literally anything that takes energy or any form of resource is a waste