Emaki

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Emaki (Jap.). A picture scroll. A long scroll, viewed from right to left, contains a series of pictures, often with the text that illustrates a story.

Its motifs range from the secular to the religious. Jigoku zōshi (the Scroll of Hells), made in the 12th cent., is a religious emaki, in which the gruesome scenes of hells based on Genshin's Ōjōyōshū (The Essentials for Salvation) are vividly illustrated. Temples and shrines supplied legends and miracle stories, and as a result of the spread of Buddhism in the Kamakura period, the lives of exemplary people were added to its themes.

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