The Gaki-zōshi Hungry Ghost Scrolls
- Date of account
- Late twelfth century
- Location
- Japan, probably court and temple contexts
- Source
- model_recalled_reference
- Record updated
- 2026-10-10
Record summary
The Gaki-zōshi are illustrated handscrolls depicting hungry ghosts, their suffering and encounters with the human world. Usually associated with late-Heian or early-Kamakura Buddhist visual culture, they provide material evidence for how apparitional beings were represented, classified and morally interpreted. They are useful in comparing visual depictions with later photographic claims of transparent or distorted figures. The uncertainty concerns workshop attribution, dating of individual fragments and the relationship between iconographic convention, ritual teaching and any claims of observed supernatural manifestation.
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