Los Angeles Should Adopt Japan’s Fire Building

By bathing in the Goshono-yu, one is supposed to receive fire protection and good luck.

(Editor’s note: This editor has received several emails from readers who have told me the reason for the intense Palisades Fire, was climate change. That assumption ignores human errors and meteorological records in California that only date from the late 1890s. In Japan, which was founded 660 BC fires have been a way of life from its earliest years.)

At Kinosaki Onsen, a rural destination in Japan, there were seven public hot springs, and each site was unique. The first springs, my daughter and I visited was Goshono-yu, known as the “Water of Beauty” which brings luck in love and protection against fires. I jokingly told my daughter; I should have visited the springs last December.

Just like Southern California’s Santa Ana, in Japan, they have the monsoons heavy rains in the summer and drier winds in the winter. It’s the dry winds in the winter that can escalate fires into a conflagration. Many great fires occurred during these dry, windy months.

It seemed everywhere we visited in Japan, there was a long history of fire destruction. One of the first recorded major disasters was the Great Fire of Meireki in 1657, which was estimated to have killed more than 100,000 people.

The Kyoto Imperial Palace has been rebuilt many times because of fire.

At the Imperial Palace in Kyoto, the tour guide showed two large doors on facing buildings. He said before World War II, those buildings were connected with a wooden walkway and a roof – and that most of the buildings were connected similarly. During World War II, about a third of the buildings (wooden) were removed, as well as the walkway connectors. The concern was if something caught on fire, the flames would easily move from building to building.  Some sources say the palace burned at least 14 times and that the fires were so frequent that arson was often assumed.

At the Nara Great Buddha Hall is the massive main hall of Tōdai-ji Temple, a UNESCO World Heritage site famous for housing the giant bronze Vairocana Buddha statue. It’s one of the world’s largest wooden buildings, built in the 8th century and rebuilt in its current form in 1709 after fires. It had burned and been rebuilt numerous times including 1180 and 1567.

Notice the fish tails on top of the Great Buddah Hall.

Gold fish tails (Shachihoko) are on top of the roof  because they supposedly provide protection against fire – they have the power to control rain and water.

The Great Tenmei Fire of Kyoto occurred in March 1788 and reportedly started as an arson attack on a vacant house in the Miyagawa district. Fueled by strong winds, the blaze spread rapidly across the city from its origin point east of the Kamo River, quickly overwhelming the wooden buildings and narrow streets of the densely populated city. The fire destroyed thousands of homes, numerous temples and shrines, the Imperial Palace, and Nijō Castle, before being finally extinguished by heavy rain on March 11.

As people of Kyoto tried to cope with the Great Fire of 1788, they wrote, and a new genre ‘fire diaries’ was invented. A famous poet Roan wrote one of the most well-known ‘fire poems’ writing.:

Look around this morning,
And you will see that all is a desecrated moor.
Is this burnt-out wasteland
Yesterday’s jewel-spread precincts?

After the fires, new regulations went into effect in cities like Edo and Kyoto in the 1700s. The shogunate promoted and, in some areas, mandated the use of fire-resistant materials.

The key materials and methods were:

• Tiled Roofs (Kawara): The shogunate eventually mandated the use of fired clay roof tiles, replacing highly flammable traditional roofing materials. The minerals in the glaze of these tiles further enhanced their heat resistance.
• Earthen Plaster Walls (Tsuchikabe or Ookabe-zukuri): A major technique involved covering the timber frame of a building with thick layers of clay or earth plaster. These walls were built with a bamboo lattice base, and multiple layers of mud and plaster (sometimes up to 20-30cm thick) were applied over several months of drying. Because the structural pillars were covered, the wood was protected from direct flame, significantly slowing the fire’s spread.
• Fire-Resistant Storehouses (Dozō or Kura): Wealthy merchants built dedicated, robust storehouses for their valuables using an advanced form of the earthen wall technique called dozō-zukuri. These had particularly thick, heavily plastered earthen walls and fire-resistant doors to protect their contents, effectively functioning as standalone fire vaults.
• Charred Wood (Shou Sugi Ban or Yakisugi): An 18th-century technique involved intentionally charring the surface of cedar planks (typically Japanese cedar) before installation. The resulting layer of carbon was resistant to mold, insects, and, crucially, fire, as the already-burnt surface made the wood less likely to ignite a second time.
• Stone Foundations and Firebreaks: While wood remained the primary structural material, natural stone was used for foundations and strategically placed in pathways and courtyards to help create physical barriers that could act as firebreaks

Citizens were encouraged to have an evacuation plan and fireproof storage for valuables. Sound familiar?

After World War II in 1950, which introduced stricter, legally binding performance requirements for fire safety. Maybe Los Angeles  instead of trying to make up something like Zone 0, could speak to the country to the west, to find out methods they have used and are using that are effective. It appears large wooden houses stacked next to each other is not ideal.

The Great Buddah is housed in a wooden structure.