There are many other treasures at Hōryūji, such as Tamamushi no zushi, a household shrine which was decorated with the iridescent wings of the tamamushi beetle. Traditionally this would’ve been revered as the physical remains of Gautama Buddha. It was glass encasing a metal urn with a bone fragment inside.
During restoration work in the early 1950s, a carpenter found a relic beneath the shinbashira. Inside of the pagoda are no stairs for ascending the five tiers totalling 122ft, but rather it is designed to be appreciated from without. The wide eaves, constituting 50% of the tower’s width, carry rain water away from the pagoda’s foundation, preventing sinking. The light bracketing attaching the separate tiers allows segments to sway in opposite directions during seismic activity, and lower pillars do not bear the weight of upper tiers because the mass of the pagoda tapers out proportionally, giving the pagoda the ability to gently, flexibly ride a seismic wave. It has wide, weighty eaves and disconnected floors arranged around a shock-absorbing central pillar (shinbashira). It was built between 594-607 and its venerable age is not down merely to blind luck, but is because of the architectural genius of its construction. More, it is the oldest wooden structure *Jeremy Clarkson voice* IN THE WORLD. Hōryūji’s gojūtō (five-storey pagoda) is Japan’s oldest pagoda.
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