Genji Monogatari Emaki
The word "emaki" stems from the word "emakimono" meaning "picture scrolls". The emakimono picture scrolls consisted of two designs: Pictures that were painted on a scroll with text added to the same scroll or a number of paintings that accompanied passages of text and were joined together in a scroll. The first known picture scroll was produced in Japan during the late ninth or tenth century. The "Genji Monogatari" picture scroll, however, was produced in the early twelfth century. Not only is the "Genji Monogatari Emaki" the oldest surviving monogatari scroll but it is also the oldest surviving non-Buddhist scroll in Japan. There is no exact date to the scroll, but it is estimated to being sometime between 1120 and 1140, in which case it was created just a little over a century after Murasaki Shikibu wrote "The Tale of Genji".
Wang Xizhi
In addition to the esteem in which he is held in China, he has been and remains influential in Japanese calligraphy.
Born in Linyi, Shandong, Wang spent most of his life in present-day Shaoxing, Zhejiang and Wenzhou. He learned the art of calligraphy from Lady Wei Shuo. He excelled in every script but particularly in semi-cursive script. His representative works include, in chronological order, "Narration on Yue Yi " (), "The Yellow Court Classic" (), "Commentaries on the Portrait of Dongfang Shuo" (), "Admonitions to the Emperor from the Imperial Mentor" (), "Preface to the Collection of Poems Composed at the Orchid Pavilion" (, also commonly known as "Lanting Xu" ), and "The Statement of Pledge "《告誓文》. Unfortunately, none of his original works remains today.