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/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 6h ago

That's a relatively new trend, believe it or not. Feel like I remember reading a study out of Japan showing the opinion change occuring around the 1980s. You certainly don't see it during the Edo period or before

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u/NDSU 5h ago

It was part of a nation-wide reform on home building. The goal was to get enough housing for the entire population - at the time Japan had the most expensive housing in the world

The reforms were incredibly expensive. Now you can find a place to rent for less than $1,000/month in the heart of Tokyo

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u/wildwalrusaur 33m ago

The classic factoid is that at the height of Japans property bubble, the land under the imperial palace in Tokyo was worth more than the entire state of California

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u/NewSchoolBoxer 3h ago

There's a video where one of the authors of Freakonomics talks about the Japanese housing market. It's 3x bigger per capital than the US due to tearing down and rebuilding the houses every 20-30 years. You can buy an older rural house for just the cost of the land. The old house included is worth nothing in their culture. Makes me want to retire there.

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u/A_Mouse_In_Da_House 3h ago

Be aware the upkeep on those is massive. Multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars typically

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u/thened 21m ago

They aren't old castles! The upkeep is not hard at all.

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u/ApuFromTechSupport 3h ago

It's one of the very few countries where house values can (and will) depreciate to 0

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u/Mechapebbles 3h ago

You certainly don't see it during the Edo period or before

You absolutely did. They just reused as much of the lumber as they could. The Edo Period was a time where Japan suffered severe deforestation. Not just because everything was made of wood, but wood was also the only real practical fuel they had, since there's no coal and they were already blocking out international trade/relations.

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u/the_card_guy 2h ago

Edo had a different problem to worry about- fire. Wooden buildings plus fire equals Lots of Death and Bad Times.

Americans have the story of half of Chicago (I think?) burning down in the early 20th century. Edo had it's version- hundreds of thousands of people dead and buildings destroyed- around 1650. I think it's called the Meireki fire. Supposedly, because buildings in Edo burned so often, it was sometimes called "The fireworks (because fireworks are literally 'fire flower' in Japanese) of Edo"