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".
Epigraphy
Most of the forms of writing known to us originated in some system of picture-writing (cf. also pictography, which developed into a hieroglyphic system. Such systems appear to have originated independently in different parts of the world — in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Crete, among the Hittites and in China and America. The evidence for all of these is mainly to be found in inscriptions. The development from Ideographs (or direct representation of an object or idea) to symbols of phonetic value, and so to syllabaries or alphabets, took place in many different systems to various degrees. But the first people to invent a completely alphabetic system of writing were the Phoenicians, from whom the Greeks borrowed (some scholars believe, but with no proving) it with certain modifications and improvements. From the Greeks was derived the Latin, and from the two all the alphabets of European peoples. It is still a matter of dispute whether the Phoenician was derived from the Egyptian.
The hieroglyphic symbols naturally tended to be conventionalised and simplified for convenience of cutting, in accordance with the materials and tools employed. In many cases they developed from a pictorial to a linear form. It is possible that some of these linear forms may not be derived from hieroglyphs, but from purely conventional geometrical forms. such as widely used at all periods and places as owners' or masons' marks. The tendency of linear forms to become wedge-shaped is most conspicuous in cuneiform, but as has been noticed, the same tendency occurs in Greek inscriptions incised on bronze.