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".
History of printing
Woodblock printing ("diaoban yinshua" 雕版印刷), known as xylography today, was the first method of printing applied to a paper medium. It became widely used throughout East Asia both as a method for printing on textiles and later, under the influence of Buddhism, on paper. As a method of printing on cloth, the earliest surviving examples from China date to about 220. "Ukiyo-e" is the best known type of Japanese woodblock art print. Most European uses of the technique on paper are covered by the term woodcut (see below), except for the block-books produced mainly in the fifteenth century.