Emaki picture scrolls are not meant to be "read" in the conventional sense—they are meant to be slowly unrolled and followed visually. As the scroll is extended leftward, images appear and disappear, drawing the viewer into the story's world. This experience feels less like appreciating static art, and more like savoring an animation.

Unfortunately, opportunities to view authentic emaki are rare. In books and catalogs, they are often presented only in fragments. Even in digital formats, vertical scrolling or static image lists are common, making it difficult to experience the original horizontal "unrolling" format.

That’s why we set out to recreate the experience of scrolling through emaki using the expressive power of horizontal scrolling on the web.

This project currently focuses on two of the most accessed emaki scrolls:

• 🐸 Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga (Scrolls of Frolicking Animals and People)
• 💀 Kusōzu – Nine Stages of a Decaying Corpse

These works are often introduced only in fragments in school textbooks and museums. Here, you can experience them in full via smooth horizontal scrolling— following the story as if you were watching a piece of animation.

For Contributors

This project is currently undergoing refactoring in preparation for open-source (OSS) release. Starting from a minimal structure, we aim to improve the following areas over time:

• - Migration to TypeScript and updating to a newer version of Next.js
• - Structuring emaki data (using JSON, Supabase, etc.)
• - Adding thumbnail navigation and scroll indicators
• - Expanding the collection with new emaki and thematic categories

The previous version included many emaki scrolls, but we have now narrowed our focus to Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga and Kusōzu in order to keep the codebase clean and simple. You can view the full demo version from before the refactoring here .

If you're intrigued by the unique theme of “Emaki × Front-End”, we invite you to join us in growing this project together!

👉 You can explore the source code and contribute via our GitHub repository .