In Kumamoto prefecture, the Kumamoto castle is being presented as their icon that stood against bombardment and fire attacks during its four centuries of existence.

Just recently, the deadly earthquakes (7.3 magnitude) struck the southern Japanese island of Kyushu, and tried to breach the walls of this samurai-era castle. Although many buildings lost their stand, the Kumamoto castle refused to fall behind nature’s will.

Thanks to the heads up of Japanese twitter users, we now know that large and extremely well fortified castle is being actually held by the large amount of roof tiles, known as kawara, designed to support structures land withstand against natural disasters by weighing down the house, specifically to quakes. Although the terrifying earthquake did seem to cause a lot of damage with massive tiles falling from the top, it was purposely done so, preventing it from being weighed down and crack into the interior building, which might fall into a larger destruction. Although the design technique is old, it has been brilliantly constructed even in this modern era.

They are currently doing some emergency repairs on the most damaged part of the rooftop, we wish everything can return to its orignial as soon as possible.