1. The Three Little Pigs Test Their Houses Against Only One Danger: Wind
In the version published by the English folklorist Joseph Jacobs, the three pigs each get building materials from a passing man: straw, furze (a prickly shrub also called gorse), and bricks. At every door the wolf says the same thing: "Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in." He blows down the straw house and the furze house. At the brick house, "he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed," and nothing happens[1].
Notice what the story measures. It has one kind of danger, wind, and one winner. A wolf cannot shake the ground. Earthquakes in Britain are mostly small, too: the British Geological Survey counted 309 across the UK in 2025, many too faint to feel[2]. In a world like that, "brick beats wind" is a fine rule. Keep an eye on it, because it is about to get tested.
2. How Sun-Dried Mud Became Fired Brick
The first bricks were not baked at all. They were shaped mud left to dry in the sun, and bricks about 10,000 years old have been found in the Middle East[4]. Later, people learned to bake clay bricks in a kiln, a very hot oven. The heat made the bricks hard and durable[3]. The exact dates for early mud and fired brick are debated, but the big picture is steady: mud first, then fire, in several places. Later, kilns became factory machines. In 1858 a German named Friedrich Hoffmann patented a kiln built as a ring of small rooms around a central fire passage. The fire moves from room to room instead of starting over each time, which makes efficient use of heat and fuel[5]. That kind of kiln suits a factory that makes bricks in large numbers, which is what Japan would soon want.
3. Why Meiji Japan Chose Brick to Fight Urban Fires
For most of Japan's history, buildings were mostly wood. Then, in the late 1800s, the government decided to bring in Western technology to catch up with Western countries. In cities, the main worry was fire, since so many buildings were wooden, and the government recommended brick instead of wood[6]. Notice the reason. The goal was to stop fire, not wind, and not earthquakes.
One of the first big brick projects was the Tomioka Silk Mill in Gunma Prefecture, north of Tokyo. Construction began in March 1871 and the main buildings were finished by July 1872. The government hired a Frenchman named Paul Brunat, who worked in silk trading in Yokohama, to direct it. The walls have a timber frame with brick filling the spaces between the wooden beams. The bricks are laid in a pattern called Flemish bond, which Japan often calls "French bond." They were laid with traditional Japanese lime plaster instead of mortar, and the roofs are covered with traditional Japanese tiles[7].
Here is the twist. Nobody in Japan had a brick industry yet, so the builders went to the people who already knew how to shape and fire clay: roof-tile makers. A local tile maker named Nirazuka Naojiro handled the supplies, and he brought in tile makers from Fukaya and from around Tomioka. The local craftspeople worked out brick-making by trial and error, with foreign guidance[7].
A few years later, Shibusawa Eiichi, a leading entrepreneur of the Meiji era (the period from 1868 to 1912), took the idea of a mechanized brick factory to the government and got the go-ahead to found the Japan Brick Company in 1887. It was built in Fukaya, the same tile-making area that had supplied workers to Tomioka[8]. The clay came from banks of the Tone River, and by some estimates about 8.3 million bricks for the original Tokyo Station building came from that clay[8].
4. The 1923 Earthquake Exposed the Weakness of Unreinforced Brick
At first, brick looked like a winner in Japan, and nobody was designing for earthquakes: there was no seismic design code in Japan before 1923[6].
The landmark of Asakusa, a lively Tokyo entertainment district, was a twelve-story brick tower called Ryounkaku, opened in 1890. It was designed by the Scottish engineer W. K. Burton, and it was the first building in Japan to have an electric elevator[9]. On September 1, 1923, the Great Kanto earthquake struck at 11:58 in the morning. Ryounkaku's upper floors collapsed, and the damage to the whole tower was so severe that it was demolished with explosives on September 23[9]. A Japanese government research engineer writes that the Ginza Brick Street, a symbol of Western-style Tokyo, was destroyed completely, while reinforced concrete buildings "showed excellent performance both against fire and earthquake shaking"[6].
Why would brick, which beat the wolf so easily, struggle here? The word to look for is unreinforced, meaning a brick wall with few or no steel bars inside. Mortar, the paste between bricks, is often not strong enough to survive shaking without cracking, and pieces of brick wall can peel off and fall[10]. A heavy wall is harder for the shaking ground to move, so the shaking can put greater stress on it. (That is general physics, not a claim from any one source.) A strong wind pushes on a wall for a while. An earthquake shakes the ground under it back and forth.
After 1923, reinforced concrete, concrete with steel bars inside, moved into the leading role in Japanese cities, and the first seismic design code was enacted in 1924[6]. That is the simplest version of the story. The next chapter shows a famous brick building that complicates it.
5. Why Tokyo Station, Built of Brick, Survived Better
Tokyo Station's red-brick Marunouchi building was finished in 1914. It is known for its extensive steel framing, and much of the original steel was imported from England. It survived the 1923 earthquake[11], and is described as having "sustained little damage" that day[12].
So brick itself may not have been the only problem. The bigger worry seems to have been brick without a steel skeleton inside, though the sources here do not test that idea directly. It fits what a Japanese brick-company history says: brick demand faded as "earthquake-friendly materials came into wider use"[8]. So does the pigs' brick house survive? Against wind, yes. Against an earthquake, it depends on how it is built. The wolf's rule was not wrong. It was only one test, and any strong thing is strong against something in particular.
Try It Yourself: Read the Brick Patterns on a Nearby Wall
- Read the pattern in a brick wall. Walk past a brick building and look at how the bricks are laid. Each brick shows either its long side (a stretcher) or its short end (a header). In English bond, rows showing the long sides of the bricks alternate with rows showing their short ends. It is regarded as one of the strongest patterns. In Flemish bond, stretchers and headers alternate within every row, which looks more refined but is harder to lay well. It appeared in England around the 17th century[13]. The Tomioka Silk Mill uses Flemish bond[7]. Which one does your wall use? Just look from the sidewalk (pavement). Do not climb on walls or pick at them.
- Sketch what you find. Draw the first three rows of the wall, marking each brick as a long side or a short end. If the rows look different from both patterns, try looking at a wall on another street. Patterns vary.
- Go to the source. The Building Research Institute paper by Taiki Saito is short and free online. It compares what three huge Japanese earthquakes did to buildings, starting with 1923. The Nippon.com article on Tomioka tells how foreign advisers and local craftspeople shared ideas.