[Tor3]

Japanese "disposable houses" was a policy implemented after WW2, to rapidly rebuild the country as well as keeping a lot of people employed. And indeed a house has traditionally dropped faster in value after purchase than even cars. And this policy has also meant that houses haven't been insulated, and very often haven't been strong against earthquakes, the latter is kind of baffling in this earthquake-prone country (the Noto earthquake on Jan. 1 2024 flattened large areas of houses, with nothing left standing). It's only gradually, through certain code changes implemented a couple of times post-1980 that things are improving. But it was as late as just a few years ago that the Japanese government hesitated, and in the end didn't implement certain new building standards, because that would put a LOT of makers out of work as they didn't have the competance to build to those standards. But this has finally changed, with the latest update a year ago.

I have to take issue with the ".. out of wood and paper". Because that's not the cause. There are buildings here literally a thousand years old and built of wood, still standing, after centuries of sometimes unbelievably big earthquakes. And wooden homes built properly these days handle earthquakes as good as anything else. It's not the material, it's how it's done which matters.

Source: Researched a lot of house building companies the last couple of years. Some of them, building wooden houses, have been in business for a long time and haven't had a single house as a victim of earthquakes for half a century, with the occasional exception where the earth has literally flipped over. Nothing can handle that. But "ordinary" earthquakes? All still standing. There are photos around showing certain houses alone on a field of flattened buildings. These guys.