An old Japanese fire prevention technique

Throughout the history, Japan suffered a great deal of casualties and damage because of fires, so the fire prevention was a continuous activity: that's how the roofs with kawara ceramic tiles and the houses with kurazukuri plaster walls were invented.

In today's photo you can see another fire prevention method used at the beginning of the last century in Tokyo: the walls were completely or partially covered with copper plates of various sizes. There were entire neighborhoods built like that and, in some places, buildings using this technique survived until today, like the one in this photo, taken in Takadanobaba.